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A    COLLEGE    COURSE 

IN 

WRITING    FROM    MODELS 


ARRANGED,  WITH  INTRODUCTION  AND  NOTES 

BY 
FRANCES  CAMPBELL  BERKELEY,  A.  M. 

Instructor  in  English  in  the  University  of  Wisconsin. 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

1910 


COPTRIOHT,    1910 
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HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


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PREFACE      Ui^  t  /O 

The  order  of  selections  in  the  following  volume  is  re- 
commended as  a  practicable  one  for  a  class  to  follow  con- 
secutively. The  editor  has  particularly  striven  for  a 
sequence  in  selections  and  exercises  which  should  repre- 
sent the  normal,  logical  growth  in  comprehension  and 
facility  of  the  average  Freshman  or  Sophomore.  Under 
nearly  every  type  of  exercise,  however,  alternative 
"models"  have  been  offered,  in  order  to  provide  greater 
breadth  of  choice  to  students  of  varying  tastes  and 
capacities. 

In  printing  the  selections,  the  punctuation  and  spell- 
ing of  the  original  texts  have  been  almost  invariably  re- 
tained. Changes  have  been  made  only  when  they  seemed 
absolutely  necessary,  either  for  greater  intelligibility  to 
students,  or  for  the  correction  of  obvious  errors. 

For  permission  to  reprint  various  copyrighted  selec- 
tions, my  acknowledgments  are  made. 

I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Carl  H.  Ruenzel,  Wisconsin, 
1912,  for  the  use  of  his  themes  on  The  Fireless  Cooker 
and  How  to  Curve  a  Baseball. 

I  have  been  fundamentally  aided  by  the  criticism  and 
advice  of  Professor  W.  T.  Brewster,  smd  the  late  Pro- 
fessor G.  R.  Carpenter,  of  Columbia  University.  To  the 
members  of  the  Department  of  English  at  the  University 


ir;oQQ«^c^<^ 


iv  PREFACE 

of  Wisconsin  I  am  also  greatly  indebted  for  valuable 
suggestions,  in  particular  to  Professor  W.  B.  Cairns, 
and  Professor  W.  G.  Bleyer.  My  chief  acknowledgments 
are  due,  however,  to  Professor  J.  W.  CunlifFe  and  Pro- 
fessor F.  G.  Hubbard,  without  whose  counsel  and  assist- 
ance the  completion  of  this  volume  would  have  been 
impossible. 

F.  C.  B. 
University  of  Wisconsin. 
January,  1910. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction ix 

EXPOSITION 

SHORT  EXPOSITORY  DESCRIPTIONS  OF 
MACHINES  AND  PROCESSES 

The  Rhines    Vote-Recording 

Machine          ....  The  Nation      ....  3 

The  Fireless  Cooker        .        .  A  Student's  Theme ...  4 

How  A  Gondola  is  Rowed  .  John  Raskin  ....  5 
How  to  Throw  a  Curve  with 

A  Baseball     .       .       .       .  A  Students  Theme        .       .  7 

A  LONG  EXPOSITION  OF  A  PROCESS 

How  Letters  go  through  the 

New  York  Post  Office      .     C.  H.  Hughes       .       .       .        9 


SCIENTIFIC  EXPOSITION 

The  Characteristic  Divergen- 
ces OF  Pigeons      .  Thomas  Henry  Huxley         .       18 

The  Method  of  Scientific  In- 
vestigation .        .  Thomas  Henry  Huxley         .       22 

Some  Recent  Theories  of  the 

Ether W.  A.  Shenstone     ...       32 


DEFINITION  AND  DISCRIMINATION  OF  TERMS 

Memory William  James        ...  50 

Labour William  Stanley  Jevons .        .  53 

Americanism — An    Attempt    at 

A  Definition  .        .        .  Brander  Matthews  ...  56 

Wit  and  Humor   .       .       .       .  E.  P.  Whipple        ...  62 

V 


vi  CONTENTS 

EXPOSITION  OF  EDUCATIONAL  AND  SOCIAL 
QUESTIONS 

PAOB 

The  Nation  and  the  States  .     James  Bryce     .       .       ...       64 

Party  Organizations  .       .     James  Bryce     ....       70 

The    Nominating    Convention 

AT  Work         ....     James  Bryce     ....       76 

National    Characteristics    as 

Molding  Public  Opinion        James  Bryce     ....       79 

Childhood  and  Early  Educa- 
tion   John  StuaH  Mill     ...       94 

An  Address  on  University  Ed- 
ucation   .       .       .       .       .     Thomas  Henry  Huxley         .     109 

Two  Kinds  of  Education  for 

Engineers       .       .       .       .     J.  B.  Johnson  .       .       .       .129 

Sweetness  and  Light        .       .     Matthew  Arnold      .       .       .145 

EDITORIALS 

What  College  Students  Read    New  York  Evening  Post      .     175 
The     Flummery    of    College 

Caps  and  Gowns  .       .       .     George  Cary  Eggleston    .       .179 

CRITICISM 

The  Study  of  Poetry       .       .  Matthew  Arnold      .  .  .182 

Appreciation          ....  Walter  Paier     .       .  .  .195 

Love's  Labours  Lost                .  Walter  Pater     .       .  .  .199 

Measure  for  Measure  .  Walter  Pater     ....     205 

A  "Madonna  and   Saints"  by 

Mantegna       ....  John  Im  Farge        .  .  .     217 

Niobe               .       .                      .  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  .  .     221 

^'INFORMAL"  ESSAYS 

The  Two  Races  of  Men  .  Charles  Lamb  ....  224 

Old  China Charles  Lamb  ....  281 

On  the  Enjoyment  op  Unpleas- 
ant Places      ....  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  .       .  239 

DESCRIPTION 

BUILDINGS— EXTERIORS  AND  INTERIORS 

The  Six  Jolly  Fellowship- 
Porters    Charles  Dickens       .  .251 

Avenel  Castle      ....     Sir  Walter  ScoU      ...     262 


CONTENTS  vii 

PAGES 

The  Ducal  Palace     .       .  John  Ruskin    ....     255 

The  Chapel  at  Engaddi  .        .     Sir  Walter  Scott       .       .       .261 
St.  Mark's John  Ruskin.   .       .       .       .267 

LANDSCAPE  AND  TOPOGRAPHY 

The  English  Lake  Country    .     William  Wordsworth       .  .     278 
Edinburgh    from    the   Calton 

Hill Robert  Louis  Stevenson  .  284 

Edinburgh  from  the  Balloon     A.  T.  Quiller-Couch        .  290 


SCENES  FOR  "LOCAL  COLOR''  AND  "MOVING 
POINT  OF  VIEW 

Spring  in  a  Side  Street  .       .     Brander  Matthews  .       .       .     293 
Morning  in  Matsue    .       .  Lafcadio  Hearn       .       .       .•   301 

OBSERVATION  OF  ANIMALS 

The  Swallow        ....     GilbeH  White  .       .       .       .307 
The  Tortoise        ....     Gilbert  White   .       .       .       .313 

A  STATE  OF  MIND 

The  Plains  of  Patagonia  W.  H.  Hudson       .       .       .     316 

PEOPLE 
Persons  in  Fiction 


The  Master  of  Ballantrae 
The  Antiquary     . 
Esther  Lyon 
Dinah  Morris 
Beatrix  Esmond  . 


Robert  Louis  Stevenson  .  .  326 
Sir  Walter  Scott  .  .  .327 
George  Eliot  .  .  .  .328 
George  Eliot  .  .  .  .328 
William  Makepeace  Thackeray    330 


Persons  from  Real  Life 

William  Wordsworth        .       .     Thomas  De  Quincey      .  .  331 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge       .      Thomas  Carlyle       .       .  .  334 

Elizabeth  Barrett  Browning       Nathaniel  Hawthorne    .  .  335 

Charles  Lamb       ....     Thomas  Noon  Talfourd    .     ,  336 

Caricature 

My  Landlady's  Daughter       .     Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  .  337 

Mr.  Micawber      ....     Charles  Dickens       .       .  .  338 

The  Ladies  of  Llangollen     .     John  Gibson  Lockhart    .  .  340 


viii  CONTENTS 

NARRATION 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

Autobiography    of    Charles  page 

Darwin 347 

NARRATION  WITHOUT  PLOT 


A  Holiday      .       .       .       . 

Dobbin  of  Ours   . 

The  Egyptians 

A  Dog  in  Exile    . 

The  Capture  of  a  Trout 


Kenneth  Grahame  .  .  .  363 
William  Makepeace  Thackeray  369 
George  Borrow  .  .  .  380 
W.li.  Hudson  .  .  .392 
R.  D.  Blackmore      ...     404 


.  NARRATION  WITH  PLOT 

Fame's  Little  Day  .        ...     Sarah  Orne  Jewett  .  .  .  409 

The  Man  Who  Was      .      .      .     Rudyard  Kipling      .  .  .  422 

The  Purloined  Letter  .     Edgar  Allen  Poe      .  .  .  440 

Dr.  Heidegger's  Experiment  .     Nathaniel  Hawthorne  .  .  465 


INTRODUCTION 


The  present  volume  of  prose  selections  urges,  as  its 
best  excuse  for  being,  the  conviction  of  the  editor  that  it 
is  founded  on  a  principle  psychologically  and  pedagogically 
sound.  Although  this  principle,  in  the  abstract,  has  been 
recognized  by  teachers,  and  although  it  has  been  delight- 
fully expounded  and  advocated  by  Robert  Louis  Stevenson, 
it  has  not,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  had  a  sufficiently  wide 
nor  definite  application  to  the  study  of  writing  among 
undergraduates. 

It  is  my  own  firm  belief  that  no  student  ever  yet  learned 
to  write  by  means  of  studying  rules  and  abstract  principles 
from  a  text-book  on  rhetoric.  After  a  fairly  long  experi- 
ence with  the  endeavors  of  Freshmen  and  Sophomores,  I 
feel  absolutely  sure  that,  to  these  long-suffering  youngsters, 
"unity,  mass,  coherence,"  and  all  their  works  remain 
"miching  mallecho"  to  the  end  of  the  chapter.  Still 
another  objection  to  this  sort  of  teaching,  besides  its 
abstractness,  and  consequent  unintelligibility  to  the  under- 
graduate mind,  is  that  such  teaching  is  mainly  destructive. 
A  freshman,  for  instance,  is  obliged  to  learn,  for  a  recitation, 
chapter  five  of  So-and-so's  book,  on  the  particular  ques- 
tion of  "Diction  and  Usage,"  or — say — on  "Style."  He 
memorizes  ten  or  a  dozen  minute  prohibited  points.  All 
of  these  things  he  is  told  never  to  do, — many  of  them  he 
never  does  do,  anyhow.  The  actual  writing  required  of 
him,  at  the  same  time,  may  be  an  entirely  irrelevant  sort 
of  thing,  in  which  no  connection  between  theory  and 
practice  is  either  contemplated  or  achieved  by  the  instructor. 
It  is  little  wonder  that  we  fail  to  "get  results,"  or  that 
rhetoric  is  considered  "dry,"  and  "Freshman  English" 

ix 


X  INTRODUCTION 

"a  stupid  bore."  We  all,  indeed,  feel  the  inadequacy 
of  much  of  our  present  system,  with  its  abundant  destruc- 
tive and  its  scanty  constructive  elements.  Who  has  not 
been  more  than  once  confronted,  after  class,  with  a  flushed 
and  puzzled  face,  and  disconcerted  by  the  innocent,  yet 
searching  plaint:  "If  I  only  knew  what  to  do  to  improve 
my  writing,  I  would  try  to  do  it!" 

To  this  practical  question,  then, — "What  must  I  do 
to  improve  my  writing?" — the  following  exercises  are 
offered  as  an  attempt  at  a  constructive  answer.  They 
are  based  on  the  proposition  that  we  learn  to  write  as  the 
result  of  a  very  subtle,  and,  for  the  most  part,  unconscious, 
process  of  absorption  and  imitation.  It  is  a  truism  to 
say  that,  other  things  being  equal,  the  man  who  has  read 
widely,  who  is  saturated  with  literary  prose,  will  be  the 
man  who  will  unconsciously  write  well.  In  what  other 
way,  on  the  whole,  can  we  account  for  the  prose  style  of 
Macaulay,  of  Hazlitt,  of  J.  S.  Mill,  of  Lamb?  And, 
strangely  enough,  although  rhetorical  principles  seem  to 
be  hopelessly  recondite  to  most  undergraduates,  nearly 
every  Freshman,  even,  has  the  power  of  imitating  a 
definite  form  or  effect  once  it  is  shown  him,  squarely.  He 
may  do  it  in  a  queer,  clumsy  way,  perhaps  often  uncon- 
sciously, but — he  does  it!  The  teaching  of  abstract 
prohibitive  rules  has,  of  course,  its  function, — the  function 
of  pruning  the  too-carelessly  growing,  or  over-luxuriant, 
foliage.  But  such  teaching  can  never  ultimately  succeed 
in  vivifying  the  germ  and  fostering  the  growing  plant. 

The  average  instructor  of  Freshmen,  in  English  com- 
position, is  confronted  with  a  difficult  problem.  To  him 
are  entrusted  a  more  or  less  heterogeneous  company  of 
young  people,  whom  he  is  to  have  charge  of  for  only  a 
limited  period.  In  this  limited  period,  he  is  expected  to 
"get  results,"  and,  before  the  year  is  over,  to  reduce  fifty 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

or  more  variously  imperfect  "preparations"  to  some  sort 
of  uniform  power  of  achievement.  Few  of  these  Fresh- 
men have  had  an  adequate  home  or  school  training.  It 
then  becomes  the  instructor's  duty  to  produce,  in  eight 
or  nine  months,  some  tithe  of  the  effect  that  should  have 
been  produced  in  the  past,  by  long  years  of  unconscious 
absorption. 

To  meet  this  need,  the  ideal  Freshman  course  in  writing 
would  represent  as  much  and  as  varied  reading  as  might 
be  crowded  into  the  time,  with  a  sufficient  amount  of  read- 
ing aloud,  from  week  to  week,  in  order  that  the  student's 
ear  as  well  as  his  eye  may  be  trained.  Writing  in  the 
course  would  be  equally  constant  and,  at  least  in  part, 
based  upon  or  adapted  from  the  reading.  The  discussions 
of  rules  and  theory  would  be  confined,  as  far  as  possible, 
to  text  criticism  on  themes  and  to  conferences.  This 
last  might  easily  be  done  with  the  aid,  for  reference,  of  so 
orderly  and  useful  a  compendium  of  rules,  for  example, 
as  Dr.  E.  C.  Woolley's  Handbook  of  Composition.  (D.  C. 
Heath,  1907).  In  such  a  course,  the  work  of  the  class 
room  would  be  entirely  constructive,  entirely  concerned 
with  the  actual  expression  of  ideas  in  the  writing  of  people 
who  write  effectively,  and  with  the  immediate  assimilation 
of  all  these  modes  and  suggestions  into  the  actual  practice 
of  the  student. 

It  is  far  from  my  intention  to  seem  ignorant  of  the 
already  well-nigh  universal  practice  of  "studying  models," 
after  one  fashion  or  another,  in  the  teaching  of  composition. 
The  following  exercises  claim  originality,  indeed,  only  in 
the  adaptation  of  such  "models"  to  a  more  definite  and 
immediate  end, — to  give  the  student,  along  with  his  subject, 
an  example  of  how  some  one  else  has  written  upon  a 
subject  largely,  if  not  entirely  similar  in  type.  Even  these 
extracts  are,  so  to  speak,  hardly  original,  since  many  of 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

them  have  already  been  "selected"  by  previous  editors. 
If  the  book  has  any  merit  of  choice,  it  lies  rather  in  what 
has  been  excluded  than  in  what  has  been  included.  It 
might  be  added  that  I  have  myself  tried  nearly  all  of  these 
exercises,  with  satisfactory  results. 

The  "adapted  subjects"  and  the  "suggestions"  are  in- 
tended to  be  suggestive  rather  than  definitive.  Every 
class  will  have  to  have  its  subjects  modified,  or  more 
closely  adapted  to  local  conditions. 

It  is  recommended  that  the  exercises  be  used  as  a  basis 
for  at  least  half  of  the  writing,  and  for  a  good  deal  of  the 
class  work  in  a  Freshman  course  in  composition.  The 
extracts  from  the  American  Commonwealth,  for  example, 
should  be  carefully  studied  in  class  for  several  recitations 
before  the  students  do  any  writing  whatever.  Then  the 
first  or  the  second  exercise  might  be  assigned  as  a  theme 
to  be  prepared  outside,  and  the  third  exercise  be  given 
as  an  impromptu.  The  adapted  writing  should  be  in- 
terspersed systematically  with  optional  writing, — ^that  is, 
with  themes  written  from  subjects  of  the  student's  o^vn 
choosing,  and  without  assistance  from  the  instructor. 

The  remaining  work  of  the  course  would  consist  of 
"outside  reading,"  to  be  very  carefully  done  and  reported 
on,  at  regular  intervals.  These  reading  reports  might  be 
either  written  or  oral.  Four  whole  books  for  the  year  would 
not  be  too  much  to  require.  One  of  the  following  com- 
binations, for  example,  would  be  sure  to  profit  our  hypo- 
thetical "average  Freshman." 

A 

1.  Huxley's  Essmjs  (selected). 

2.  Ruskin:    The   Crown  of  Wild  OlivCy   or   The  Seven 

Lamps  of  Architecture. 

3.  Stevenson:  An   Inland    Voyage,    or    Travels   with    a 

Donkcij. 

4.  Any  good  novel,  or  volume  of  short  stories. 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

B. 

1.  John  Burroughs'  Essays  (selected). 

2.  Stevenson:  Memories    and    Portraits    or     Virginihus 

Puerisque. 

3.  One  of  Lafcadio  Hearn's  books  of  travel. 

4.  Some  short  stories  by  Kipling. 

Yet  every  class  will  of  course  have  to  have  a  different 
treatment  in  the  matter  of  outside  reading.  It  is  an  ad- 
vantage to  have  a  whole  section  reading  the  same  books, 
however,  as  this  makes  general  class  discussion  prac- 
ticable. 

A  word  is  perhaps  needed  to  explain,  or  to  justify,  the 
absence  of  any  models  for  Argumentation.  As  this  book, 
however,  has  grown  out  of  an  elementary  course  in  which 
there  was  no  time  for  the  study  of  argument,  it  has  seemed 
inexpedient  to  add,  arbitrarily,  exercises  in  a  kind  of 
writing  which  is  usually  postponed  until  the  later  years 
of  a  college  course. 

My  great  indebtedness,  finally,  must  be  acknowledged 
to  such  collections  as  ""Modern  English  Prose,''  by  Profess- 
ors G.  R.  Carpenter  and  W.  T.  Brewster,  and  ''Studies 
in  Structure  and  Style,"  by  Professor  Brewster.  By 
Miss  Gertrude  Buck's  two  books,  also, — ''Narrative 
Writing''  and  "Expository  Writing," — I  have  been 
assisted  fundamentally,  if  not  in  a  way  that  may  be 
specifically  acknowledged.  I  likewise  owe  much,  indi- 
rectly, to  "  Materials  for  the  Study  of  Rhetoric  and  Compo- 
sition," by  Professor  Fred  N.  Scott,  published  at  Ann 
Arbor  for  use  in  the  University  of  Michigan. 


EXPOSITION 


THE  RHINES  VOTE-RECORDING  MACHINE* 


THE  practical  machine  is  an  oblong  brass  box,  about 
10  X  14  inches,  six  inches  deep,  with  a  hinged 
cover.  This  box  is  placed  on  a  small  stand  in  the  rear 
of  the  polling-room,  and  in  plain  sight  of  the  judges  and 
5  clerks  of  election.  The  voter  is  identified  by  the  judges 
and  passes  into  the  stall  where  the  machine  is.  On 
raising  the  lid  of  the  box,  a  screen  is  drawn  up  before  the 
stall,  shutting  both  voter  and  machine  from  view.  The 
lid  when  raised  discloses  a  number  of  keys  not  unlike 

10  organ  stops.  There  are  as  many  rows  of  keys  as  there 
are  tickets  in  the  field,  and  as  many  keys  in  a  row  as 
there  are  offices  to  be  filled.  The  printed  name  of  each 
candidate  and  the  office  to  which  he  aspires  are  placed 
in  the  top  of  these  keys. 

15  The  elector  in  voting  presses  down  the  key  bearing 
the  name  of  the  candidate  he  wishes  to  support.  The 
key  remains  down.  In  being  pressed  it  has  locked  all 
the  keys  of  other  candidates  to  the  same  office,  thus  making 
it  impossible  for  an  elector  to  vote  for  more  than  one 

20  candidate  to  the  same  office;  at  the  same  time  this  key 
has  imprinted  indelibly,  on  a  slip  of  paper  beneath,  a 
number — which  is  the  total  vote  cast  for  that  candidate 
at  that  time.  The  elector  votes  for  each  of  the  other 
offices  in  turn,  in  the  same  way,  shuts  down  the  lid  of  the 

25  box,  thus  ringing  an  alarm  bell  and  dropping  the  screen 

*Quoted  from  An  Introduction  to  Theme-Writing,  by  J.  B.  Fletcher 
and  G.  R.  Carpenter. 


4  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

in  front,  exposing  machine  and  voter  to  the  view  of  the 
judges.     The  box  lid  on  being  closed  liberates  all  the 
keys,  and   the   machine   is   ready   for  the   next   voter. 
—The  Nation,  April  18,  1889,  p.  326. 


THE  FIRELESS  COOKER 

THE  fireless  cooker  is  the  most  modern  device  for  saving  5 
fuel  and  trouble  in  cooking.  The  principle  upon 
which  it  is  based  is  the  non-conductivity  of  heat  of  some 
substances,  such  as  dry  hay,  mineral  wool,  and  excelsior. 
When  a  heated  liquid  ^r  solid  is  enveloped  in  one  of  these 
substances  the  time  required  for  the  heat  to  escape  is  10 
greatly  lengthened,  and  the  process  of  cooking  continues 
for  a  long  time,  even  thougli  the  source  of  heat  is  with- 
drawn. There  is,  moreover,  no  danger  from  burning 
or  boiling  over. 

The  fireless  cooker  is  such  a  simple  device  that  it  can  15 
be  made  by  the  prospective  user  with  little  trouble  and  a 
great  saving.     The  cooker,  as  made  in  the  home,  consists 
of  an  outer  wooden  box  which  contains  a  good-sized  metal 
pail,  the  box  being  made  large  enough  to  allow  for  at  least 
five   inches   of   packing   with   one   of   the   above-named  20 
substances  on  all  sides  of  the  pail  except  the  top.     Into 
the  metal  pail  a  dish  containing  the  substance  to  be  cooked 
is  placed  and  the  pail  is  provided  with  a  tight-fitting  cover. 
To  insure  against  the  escape  of  heat  from  the  top  of  the 
pail,  a  cushion  of  the  same  substance  as  that  used  for  25 
the   packing   is   provided.     This   cushion   is   about   four 
inches  thick  and  is  of  the  same  size  as  the  interior  of  the 


EXPOSITION  5 

box,  so  that  it  fits  snugly  on  all  sides.  The  cover  of  the 
box  is  hinged  on  one  side,  and  upon  raising  the  cover  the 
cushion  can  be  removed  and  food  can  be  put  into  or  taken 
out  of  the  pail  at  will.     The  outer  pail  is  usually  partly 

5  filled  with  boiling  water  when  food  is  to  be  cooked  in  it; 
this  water  retains  its  high  temperature  until  fresh  air  is 
allowed  to  reach  it,  when  the  cover  of  the  box  and  pail  is 
removed.  The  food  is  cooked  in  the  usual  way  for  a 
short  time  before  being  put  into  the  pail.     The  heating 

10  of  the  boiling  water  and  that  imparted  to  the  food  before 
putting  it  into  the  cooker  is  sufiicient  to  prepare  the  dish, 
and  the  food  is  now  left  in  the  cooker  until  it  is  thoroughly 
done. — ^A  Student's  Theme. 


HOW  A  GONDOLA  IS  ROWED 


\    GONDOLA  is  in  general  rowed  only  by  one  man, 

15  -^-^     standing  at  the  stern;  those  of  the  upper  classes 

having   two    or   more    boatmen,    for  greater  speed   and 

magnificence.     In   order  to  raise  the  oar  sufficiently,  it 

rests,  not  on  the  side  of  the  boat,  but  on  a  piece  of  crooked 

timber  like  the  branch  of  a  tree,  rising  about  a  foot  from 

20  the  boat's  side,  and  called  a  "/orco/a."     The  forcola  is 

of  different  forms,  according  to  the  size  and  uses  of  the 

boat,  and  it  is  always  somewhat  complicated  in  its  parts 

and  curvature,  allowing  the  oar  various  kinds  of  rests 

and  catches  on  both  its  sides,  but  perfectly  free  play  in 

25  all  cases;  as  the  management  of  the  boat  depends  on  the 

gondolier's  being  able  in  an  instant  to  place  his  oar  in  any 

position.     The  forcola  is  set  on  the  right-hand  side  of  the 


6  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

boat,  some  six  feet  from  the  stem:  the  gondolier  stands 
on  a  little  flat  platform  or  deck  behind  it,  and  throws 
nearly  the  entire  weight  of  his  body  upon  the  forward 
stroke.  The  effect  of  the  stroke  would  be  naturally  to 
turn  the  boat's  head  round  to  the  left,  as  well  as  to  send  5 
it  forward;  but  this  tendency  is  corrected  by  keeping  the 
blade  of  the  oar  under  the  water  on  the  return  stroke,  and 
raising  it  gradually,  as  a  full  spoon  is  raised  out  of  any 
liquid,  so  that  the  blade  emerges  from  the  water  only  an 
instant  before  it  again  plunges.  A  downward  and  lateral  10 
pressure  upon  the  forcola  is  thus  obtained,  which  entirely 
counteracts  the  tendency  given  by  the  forward  stroke; 
and  the  effort,  after  a  little  practice,  becomes  hardly 
conscious,  though,  as  it  adds  some  labor  to  the  back 
stroke,  rowing  a  gondola  at  speed  is  hard  and  breathless  15 
work,  though  it  appears  easy  and  graceful  to  the  looker- 
on. 

If  then  the  gondola  is  to  be  turned  to  the  left,  the  forward 
impulse  is  given  without  the  return  stroke;  if  it  is  to  be 
turned  to  the  right,  the  plunged  oar  is  brought  forcibly  20 
up  to  the  surface;  in  either  case  a  single  stroke  being 
enough  to  turn  the  light  and  flat-bottomed  boat.  But 
as  it  has  no  keel,  when  the  turn  is  made  sharply,  as  out 
of  one  canal  into  another  very  narrow  one,  the  impetus 
of  the  boat  in  its  former  direction  gives  it  an  enormous  25 
leeway,  and  it  drifts  laterally  up  against  the  wall  of  the 
canal,  and  that  so  forcibly,  that  if  it  has  turned  at  speed, 
no  gondolier  can  arrest  the  motion  merely  by  strength  or 
rapidity  of  stroke  of  oar;  but  it  is  checked  by  a  strong 
thrust  of  the  foot  against  the  wall  itself,  the  head  of  the  80 
boat  being  of  course  turned  for  the  moment  almost  com- 
pletely round  to  the  opposite  wall,  and  greater  exertion 
made  to  give  it,  as  quickly  as  possible,  impulse  in  the  new 
direction. — Ruskin,  Stones  of  Venice,  vol.  ii,  pp.  378-4 
Dana,  Estes  &  Co. 


EXPOSITION 


HOW  TO  THROW  A  CURVE  WITH  A  BASEBALL 

^THHE  average  American  boy  who  becomes  interested  in 
-*-  baseball  starts  to  play  the  game  with  the  intention  of 
becoming  a  pitcher.  He  gets  the  idea  that  in  order  to  be 
a  real  pitcher,  he  must  be  able  to  curve  the  ball  in  every 
5  way  known  to  baseball,  so  he  sets  out  to  master  the  curves 
which  are  easiest  to  throw.  I  will  try  to  tell  the  reader 
how  the  most  simple  curve,  known  as  the  out-curve,  is 
thrown  by  a  right-handed  pitcher.  This  curve  is  called 
the  out-curve  because  it  curves  out  from  a  right-handed 

10  batter. 

The  ball  is  grasped  in  the  right  hand  and  is  held  mainly 
by  the  thumb  and  first  two  fingers,  the  third  finger  resting 
lightly  against  the  sphere  and  helping  to  support  it,  while 
the  fourth  or  little  finger  does  not  come  into  contact  with 

15  the  ball  at  all.  When  the  ball  is  to  be  delivered,  the  arm 
is  brought  around  with  a  sweeping  over-handed  or  under- 
handed motion  and  the  ball  is  allowed  to  leave  the  hand 
just  before  the  swing  is  completed.  When  the  ball  leaves 
the  hand,  it  is  allowed  to  roll  over  the  inner  surface  of 

20  the  first  finger,  the  thumb  being  used  to  start  the  ball 
in  this  direction.  By  rolling  over  the  index  finger  in  this 
manner  and  by  giving  the  hand  an  outward  turn  when 
the  ball  leaves  it,  the  ball  is  made  to  spin  on  a  vertical 
axis  and  this  spinning  causes  the  ball   to  curve  in  the 

25  desired  direction.  The  curve  may  be  thrown  as  a  sweep- 
ing curve  or  as  a  quick-breaking  one.  A  sweeping  curve 
is  one  that  curves  slowly  from  the  time  it  leaves  the  pitcher's 
hand  until  it  strikes  some  resistance,  while  a  quick-breaking 
curve  goes  straight  until  it  comes  to  within  two  or  three 

30  feet  of  the  plate  and  then  suddenly  shoots  out  and  away 
from  the  batter.     The  latter  curve  is  the  more  deceptive 


8  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

of  the  two,  and  is  caused  to  break  so  quickly  by  snapping 
the  wrist  back  just  before  the  ball  is  allowed  to  leave  the 
hand.  Speed  is  not  required  to  throw  the  sweeping 
out-curve,  so  that  any  boy  can  learn  to  deliver  it,  but  a 
medium  amount  of  speed  is  required  to  throw  the  quick- 
breaking  one.  Hence  the  latter  curve  is  rarely  seen  among 
the  younger  set  of  baseball  enthusiasts,  who  have  not 
acquired  the  speed  necessary  to  throw  this  ball. — A 
Student's  Theme. 

Suggestions:  Observe,  in  each  of  these  short  explanations, 
the  logical  plan  that  is  clearly  followed:  (1)  A  preliminary  de- 
scription of  parts.  (2)  An  explanation  of  the  combination  and 
uses  of  these  parts,  or  of  the  principle  upon  which  the  combin- 
ation is  based.  Note  that  the  preliminary  description  is  es- 
sential for  clearness. 

Write  for  some  one  younger  than  yourself  and  use  as  simple 
words  as  possible. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Machines  and  apparatus: 

A  fountain  pen.  A  milking  machine. 

An  electric  door-bell.  A  cash  register. 

A  telephone  transmitter.  The  weather  flags. 

A  type- writer.  A  piece  of  laboratory  apparatus. 

The  turbine  wheel.  A  racing  shell. 

'  A   camera.  A  street  sprinkler. 

A  coffee-percolator.  A  *' penny-in-the-slot "  machine. 

Processes: 

How  to  paddle  a  canoe.  How  a  boat  goes  through  a  lock. 

The  lariat  and  its  uses.  Two  modes  of  high  jumping. 

IIow  to  manage  an  automo-  Sailing    a    boat. 

bile.  Throwing  the  hammer. 

Harnessing  a  horse.  Making  a  stroke  in  golf 

Calling      up     a     telephone  How  to  tell  time. 

number.  The  Lawford  stroke,  in  tennis. 
Learning  to  sew  on  a  sewing  machine. 


EXPOSITION  9 

HOW    LETTERS    GO    THROUGH     THE 
NEW  YORK   POST    OFFICE 

C.  H.  Hughes 

SIX  hundred  thousand  letters  dropped  into  the  boxes 
and  chutes  at  the  post  office  on  Park  Row,  between 
5  p.  m.,  and  8  p.  m.  in  three  hours,  one  of  the  days  before 
Christmas,  gives  an  idea  of  what  the  hoHdays  meant  to 
5  Superintendent  Roome  and  his  assistants.  The  letters 
had  to  be  assorted  and  out  of  the  building  before  the 
early  morning  mail  arrived.  But  with  pneumatic  tubes, 
cancelling  machines,  and  experienced  clerks,  tables  that 
were  piled  high  in  the  evening  were  emptied  and  waiting 

10  for  the  incoming  mail. 

December,  1908,  was  a  busy  month  for  the  postal 
department.  Official  figures  from  Postmaster  Morgan 
give  the  receipts  from  the  sale  of  stamps  as  $2,018,949, 
the  largest  in  the  history  of  the  New  York  Post  Office, 

15  exceeding  that  of  December,  1907,  by  $141,411.95. 
Several  of  the  sub-stations  during  the  past  year  had  a 
most  remarkable  growth,  particularly  the  one  at  the  Hud- 
son Terminal  building,  opened  last  July,  where  the  sale 
of  stamps  for  the  first  month  was  $18,000,  and  in  December 

20  six  months  later  it  was  over  $50,000,  an  increase  of  nearly 
200  per  cent. 

From  the  chutes  marked  "Outgoing  Domestic  Mail" 
along  Park  Row  and  Broadway  the  mail  is  taken  to  tables 
where  the  primary  assortment  is  made,  i.  e.,  separation 

25  by  States  and  Territories.  The  mail  for  the  South  and 
West  is  sent  through  pneumatic  tubes  to  the  Hudson 
Terminal  Station  and  from  there  to  the  trains  at  Jersey 
City.    En  route,  it  is  in  charge  of  the  railroad  mail  clerks, 


10  A  COLLEGE  COUPISE  IN  WRITING 

who  handled  in  1908  nearly  20,000,000,000  pieces  of  first 
class  matter  and  35,000,000  of  second  class,  and  whose 
errors  averaged  one  in  about  12,000  pieces  correctly 
distributed.  The  mail  for  the  North  and  East  is  sent 
through  tubes  to  Station  H,  and  from  there  to  the  New  5 
York  Central,  and  New  York,  New  Haven  and  Hartford 
Railroads. 

Letters  dropped  into  the  chutes  for  "New  York  City 
Only'*  are  at  once  dispatched  to  the  nearest  station, 
where  they  are  given  to  the  carriers  for  distribution.  10 

It  is  the  aim  of  the  clerks  to  get  rid  of  the  mail  as  soon 
as  it  arrives,  and  never  allow  it  to  accumulate.  With 
the  enormous  quantities  received  at  the  post  office,  the 
breaking  down  of  a  compressor  or  an  accident  at  a  sub- 
station would  mean,  perhaps,  several  hours  extra  work.       15 

New  mechanical  labor-saving  devices  are  often  tried, 
and  the  three  that  have  proved  the  most  successful,  and 
have  done  much  toward  making  the  present  rapid  handling 
of  the  mail  possible,  are  pneumatic  tubes,  cancelling 
machines,  and  belt  conveyors.  20 

Pneumatic  tubes  for  transmitting  packages,  are  of 
comparatively  recent  origin;  yet  the  principle  was  ex- 
ploited as  long  ago  as  1667  by  Denis  Papin  in  England. 
Nearly  two  hundred  years  later,  the  International  Tele- 
graph Company,  London,  England,  succeeded  in  sending  25 
carriers  by  compressed  air  through  a  tube  an  inch  and  a 
half  in  diameter  and  about  660  feet  long.  Its  success 
was  so  marked  that  others  were  installed  larger  in  diameter, 
and  instead  of  a  single  tube,  there  were  two,  one  for  send- 
ing and  one  for  receiving.  30 

The  system  developed  in  England  has  the  tubes  radiate 
from  a  central  station  to  sub-stations  in  different  parts 
of  the  city,  with  two  to  the  largest  and  one  to  the  smallest. 
The  outgoing  carriers  are  dispatched  by  air  pressure  of 


EXPOSITION  11 

about  ten  pounds  to  the  square  inch,  which,  with  a 
corresponding  vacuum,  makes  the  speed  of  the  carriers 
the  same  in  both  directions.  The  English  Post  Depart- 
ment operates  sixty  miles  of  tubes,  forty  of  which  are  in 
5  the  London  district. 

Germany  and  other  European  countries  have  the 
Siemens  system,  differing  in  many  respects  from  the 
English.  In  the  Siemens  the  tubes  are  laid  in  circuits 
serving  several   stations,  and  the  air  is  stored   in  large 

10  tanks  and  turned  into  the  tubes  whenever  a  carrier  is 
dispatched.  Berlin  has  thirty  miles  in  operation,  while 
Paris  and  Vienna  have  nearly  the  same  number. 

The  Batcheller  system  is  used  in  New  York  and  ex- 
tensively in  the  United  States.     In  this  system  a  continuous 

15   current  of  air  flows  through  the  tubes,  and  the  carriers 

containing  the  letters  are  inserted  and  removed  without 

interfering  with  the  flow  of  air;  in  fact,  they  travel  with  it. 

From  the  post  oflSce  on  Park  Row,  there  are  five  branches, 

with   terminals   at   the    Custom   House,    Brooklyn   Post 

20  OflSce,  Station  H  (Grand  Central) ,  Hudson  Terminal 
building,  and  Station  L,  One  Hundred  and  Twenty-fifth 
Street  and  Lexington  Avenue  (West  Side  branch),  the 
last  two  having  been  completed  a  short  time  ago.  Before 
the  branch  to  Station  L  was  in  operation,  the  mail  was 

25  carried  in  bags  by  the  elevated  trains,  but  this  service 
has  been  done  away  with. 

The  Custom  House  or  Produce  Exchange  branch  has  a 
single  carrier  station,  at  No.  60  Wall  Street.  The  branches 
to  Brooklyn  and    Hudson    Terminal  building   have    no 

30  stations.  The  Grand  Central  has  stations  at  No.  103 
East  Twelfth  Street;  Madison  Square,  between  Twenty- 
third  and  Twenty-fourth  Streets,  on  Fourth  Avenue; 
F,  between  Lexington  and  Third  Avenues,  on  Thirty- 
fourth  Street,  and  H,   corner  of  Forty-third  Street  and 


12  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Madison  Avenue.  The  West  Side  branch  is  the  longest, 
with  stations  at  A,  between  Prince  and  Houston  Streets, 
on  Green  Street;  V,  corner  of  West  Broadway  and  Canal 
Street;  O,  No.  122  Fifth  Avenue;  E,  West  Thirty-second 
Street,  near  Sixth  Avenue;  Times  Square,  No.  231  West  5 
Thirty-ninth  Street;  G,  West  Fifty-first  Street,  near 
Broadway;  N,  Broadway,  corner  of  Sixty-ninth  Street; 
W,  comer  of  Columbus  Avenue  and  Eighty-fourth  Street; 
J,  One  Hundred  and  Twenty-fourth  Street  and  Eighth 
Avenue,  and  L,  corner  of  Lexington  Avenue  and  One  10 
Hundred  and  Twenty-fifth  Street. 

It  is  proposed  to  connect  H,  of  the  Grand  Central  branch 
with  L,  of  the  West  Side,  by  tubes  through  Stations  Y, 
Sixty-eighth  Street,  near  Third  Avenue;  K,  Eighty-eighth 
Street,  near  Third  Avenue,  and   U,  One  Hundred  and  15 
Third  Street,  comer  of  Third  Avenue,  thus  making  a 
circuit  of  two  independent  branches,  and  greatly  improving 
the  East  Side  service,  as  mail  can  then  be  sent  to  the  post 
office  either  by  the  West  Side  branch  or  by  the  proposed 
branch  and  the  present  one  from  the  Grand  Central.    A  20 
cross-town  branch  is  also  contemplated  from  Times  Square 
to  H,  that  would  add  to  the  efficiency  of  the  circuit.     Still 
another  is  from  O,  No.   122  Fifth  Avenue,  to  C,  West 
Thirteenth    Street    and    Ninth    Avenue.     This     branch 
(called  the  Foreign  Exchange)  would  be  of  great  advantage  25 
to  the  shipping  interests  on  West  Street. 

Every  station  served  by  the  pneumatic  system  in  New 
York  has  an  apparatus  for  transmitting  and  receiving 
carriers.  At  the  post  office  there  are  two  types  of  trans- 
mitters, the  horizontal  and  the  inclined.  The  former  30 
is  the  older,  and  has  a  frame  that  swings  out  from  the 
main  line  to  receive  the  carrier,  and  then  back  again  to 
dispatch  it,  the  air  forcing  the  carrier  forward.  An 
automatic   time   lock   prevents   the   carriers   from   being 


EXPOSITION  13 

dispatched  with  less  than  twelve  seconds'  headway,  thus 
insuring  a  fixed  distance  between  them. 

The  inclined  transmitters  are  used  on  the  new  Hudson 
Terminal  and  West  Side  branches.  The  carrier,  instead 
of  being  inserted  horizontally,  is  at  an  angle  of  about 
thirty  degrees,  and  the  large  swinging  frame  is  done  away 
with.  A  considerable  saving  in  floor  space  is  made,  and, 
owing  to  the  cramped  conditions,  such  a  saving  is  valu- 
able. 

The  striking  force  of  a  carrier  traveling  thirty  miles 
an  hour  is  no  mean  amount,  and  to  design  a  receiver  to 
stop  it  without  injury  called  for  ingenuity  on  the  part  of 
the  designer.  As  the  system  is  operated  by  compressed 
air,  advantage  was  taken  of  it — in  preference  to  springs 
or  other  devices.  The  carriers  enter  a  chamber,  the  air 
forming  a  cushion  in  front  of  them,  and  are  brought 
almost  to  a  state  of  rest  when  they  are  discharged  on  to  a 
table  striking  a  buffer  at  one  end.  They  are  then  taken 
from  the  table  and  opened. 

During  the  rush  hours  a  carrier  is  dispatched  from  the 
post  office  over  each  of  the  five  branches  every  fifteen 
seconds;  that  is,  one  to  the  Hudson  Terminal  every  fifteen 
seconds,  one  to  Brooklyn  every  fifteen  seconds,  and  so  on, 
with  a  return  service  at  the  same  rate.  Twenty  carriers 
are  dispatched,  and  a  like  number  received  every  minute. 
The  men  at  the  tubes  are  constantly  on  the  jump,  and 
none  has  any  idle  moments,  for  the  slightest  loafing 
or  holding  back  would  start  the  carriers  collecting, 
and  in  two  or  three  minutes  there  would  be  endless  con- 
fusion. 

A  carrier  takes  three  and  one-half  minutes  to  go  to 
Brooklyn,  two  minutes  to  the  Custom  House,  five  minutes 
to  Station  L,  One  Hundred  and  Twenty-fifth  Street  and 
Lexington  Avenue,  and  nearly  nine  minutes  to  H  (Grand 


14  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Central),  the  latter  requiring  the  extra  time  because  of 
the  rehandling  at  the  Madison  Square  station. 

The  carriers  are  cylindrical  in  form,  thirty  inches  long, 
weigh  sixteen  pounds,  and  hold  500  to  600  letters,  tied 
together  in  small  bundles  marked  with  the  station  at  which  5 
they  are  to  be  delivered.  They  are  about  seven  inches 
in  diameter,  or  one  inch  less  than  the  tubes,  but  they  are 
made  to  fit  snugly  by  two  cotton  rings,  one  at  each  end, 
held  in  place  by  wrought  iron  bands. 

Carriers  have  been  designed  with  doors  on  the  side  and  10 
on  the  end.  It  is  very  important  that  no  amount  of 
jolting  or  shaking  of  the  carrier  in  transit  should  open 
the  door,  and  at  the  same  time  it  must  be  easily  and  quickly 
opened  by  the  men  at  the  stations.  The  end  door 
has  been  adopted  in  New  York,  and  has  proved  satisfac-  15 
tory. 

When  the  five  branches  are  in  operation  the  carriers 
from  all  the  stations  can  bring,  it  is  estimated,  10,000 
letters  to  the  post  office  and  take  a  similar  number  away 
every  minute.  20 

The  tubes  consist  of  two  eight-inch  wrought  iron  pipes 
from  the  post  office  to  each  station,  laid  five  to  ten  feet 
below  the  surface  of  the  street.  One  is  for  the  outgoing 
and  the  other  for  the  incoming  mail,  and  both  are  joined 
at  the  station  and  the  post  office,  making  a  complete  circuit  25 
for  the  air  to  travel  in.  To  the  circuit  is  connected  a 
compressor  supplying  air  at  a  pressure  sufficiently  high 
to  drive  the  carriers  twenty-five  to  thirty  miles  an  hour. 
For  short  distances,  as  to  the  Custom  House,  about  five 
pounds  per  square  inch  is  required,  and  for  longer,  as  30 
to  H,  seven  or  more  pounds. 

Should  a  carrier  accidentally  get  stuck  in  a  tube  it  can 
sometimes  be  dislodged  by  increasing  the  pressure.  If 
this  is  of  no  use,  then  a  vacuum  is  made  in  the  tube  be- 


EXPOSITION  15 

hind  it,  and  the  air  turned  on  in  front,  pushing  the  carrier 
back  to  the  station  it  started  from.  Another  way  is  to 
disconnect  the  transmitter  at  the  station  nearest  the 
carrier  and  fire  a  revolver  into  the  tube.  The  time  is 
5  noted  that  elapses  from  the  discharge  to  the  echo  of  the 
report  reflected  back  by  the  obstructing  carrier.  Then, 
knowing  the  velocity  of  sound,  it  is  easy  to  calculate  the 
distance  the  carrier  is  from  the  station.  In  one  instance 
it  was  found  to  be  within  a  foot  of  the  calculated  dis- 

10  tance. 

In  the  basement  of  the  post  office  are  the  compressors 
for  the  different  branches.  Three  are  driven  by  steam, 
but  two  recently  installed  are  driven  by  electric  motors 
geared  to  high  pressure  blowers. 

15  The  cancelling  of  first-class  mail  is  now  done  by  ma- 
chines. Imagine  the  force  of  clerks  that  would  be  re- 
quired to  cancel  by  hand  the  1,000,000  or  so  letters  daily 
received  at  the  post  office.  Of  course,  second  and  third- 
class  mail  and  irregular  shaped  packages  cannot  be  run 

20  through  machines,  but  then  their  number  is  small  com- 
pared to  the  first  class. 

The  machines  do  three  things — ^first,  cancel  the  stamp 
with  a  series  of  wavy  lines;  second,  postmark  the  envelope 
with  the  city,    state,  date,  and  hour,  and,  third,  count 

25  the  letter.  Then  there  will  be  noticed  in  the  line  a  number 
and  also  a  letter,  either  C  or  D.  The  number  designates 
the  machine  that  did  the  cancelling,  and  the  letter,  C  if 
collected  by  a  carrier,  or  D  if  dropped  into  one  of  the 
chutes  at  the  station. 

30  The  machines  at  the  post  office,  Wall  Street,  and  Hudson 
Terminal  stations  are  called  the  "fliers,"  and  they  rightly 
live  up  to  the  name,  for  each  will  cancel,  postmark,  and 
count  65,000  to  75,000  letters  an  hour,  or  seventeen  to 
twenty  per  second.     The  letters  leave  in  a  perfect  stream, 


16  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  batches  of  a  thousand  are  run  through  in  a  minute. 
So  rapid  is  the  "flier"  in  stamping  and  cancelling  that 
it  is  impossible  to  count  the  letters,  except  by  a  mechan- 
ical counter.  5 

The  flier  consists  of  several  sets  of  rollers  and  dies  on  a 
table  and  two  racks  for  holding  letters.  The  table  is 
supported  at  a  convenient  height  above  the  floor  by  a 
hollow  cast-iron  column.  The  rollers  and  dies  are  driven 
by  an  electric  motor  in  the  column.  The  letters  are  10 
arranged  with  the  stamps  all  in  the  same  position,  and 
then  placed  in  the  feeding  rack.  The  operator  starts 
the  motor,  and  by  lightly  pressing  on  the  letters  they  are 
drawn  along  one  at  a  time  by  rubber-covered  rollers  to 
the  steel  dies  that  cancel  the  stamps  and  post-mark  the 
envelopes.  After  passing  the  dies  they  are  drawn  by  other  15 
rollers  to  the  delivery  rack,  whence  they  are  taken  for 
distribution.  The  interesting  feature  is  the  arrangement 
of  the  dies  to  accommodate  envelopes  of  difl^erent  lengths, 
so  that  one  nine  inches  long  following  one  only  three 
inches  will  be  marked  once,  and  not  several  times  as  20 
might  be  expected. 

There  is  now  being  tested  at  the  Hudson  Terminal 
Station  a  system  of  belt  conveyors.  Before  it  was  installed 
the  mail  was  dragged  in  large  baskets  or  placed  on  small 
trucks  and  pushed  from  one  part  of  the  station  to  another.  25 
Belt  conveyors  have  been  widely  used  for  carrying  sand, 
stone,  coal,  and  other  materials,  yet  this  is  the  first  time 
they  have  been  used  for  mail  in  New  York. 

Extending  around  the  station  and  hanging  about  four 
feet  from  the  ceiling  by  small  rods  are  two  lines  of  belt  30 
conveyors,  one  for  the  incoming  and  the  other  for  the 
outgoing  mail.  The  belts  are  of  canvas  eighteen  inches 
wide,  with  boards  along  the  sides  preventing  anything 
put  on  them  from  falling  ofl^. 


EXPOSITION  17 

The  belt  for  the  incoming  mail  is  designed  for  taking 
metal  trays  to  nine  distribution  boards.  Each  board 
has  hundreds  of  pigeon-holes,  marked  with  the  names  of 
cities  and  towns  all  over  the  United  States.  The  trays 
5  hold  about  500  letters  apiece,  and  across  one  of  the  ends 
has  numbers  from  1  to  9,  representing  the  different  boards. 
Suppose  it  is  required  to  send  letters  from  board  2  to 
board  6.  A  pointer  on  the  tray  is  moved  to  number  6, 
the  tray  placed  on  the  belt,  runs  past  boards  3,  4  and  5, 

10  but  at  6  hits  a  lug  that  causes  it  to  leave  the  belt  and 
stop  at  the  shelf  for  board   6. 

The  conveyor  for  the  outgoing  mail  has  chutes  to  the 
tables.  The  mail  either  in  bags  or  packages  is  thrown 
onto  the  belt,  carried  along  by  it,  and  falls  off  at  the  chute. 

15  Both  conveyors  run  at  a  speed  of  about  200  feet  a  minute, 
and  the  one  for  the  trays  is  driven  by  a  five-horse-power- 
electric  motor  and  the  other  by  a  three-horse-power.  They 
were  first  used  New  Year's  Eve  (December  31,  1908), 
and  it  is  doubtful  if  they  will  ever  receive  a  more  severe 

20  test  than  they  did  that  night.  The  amount  of  mail  handled 
was  a  record-breaker,  exceeding  1,000,000  pieces,  and  the 
conveyors  worked  without  a  hitch.  It  is  estimated  that 
they  do  away  with  the  services  of  fifteen  men. — New  York 
Evening  Post,  February  20,  1909. 

Suggestions:  This  is  an  easy  and  clear,  if  somewhat  "jour- 
nalistic" exposition  of  a  rather  complicated  process.  How 
does  the  writer  open  his  exposition?  What  general  function 
does  such  an  opening  perform  .'*  Of  what  does  the  body  of  the 
exposition  consist.?  How  far  is  description  employed?  Would 
pictures  or  diagrams  help  to  make  the  apparatus  clearer  ? 

In  treating  your  own  subject,  consider  carefully  the  main 
things  that  are  to  be  explained.  Reduce  the  process  to  three 
or  four  principal  stages  or  parts,  if  this  is  possible;  then  group 
all  minor  points  under  these  heads.  Use  a  diagram  if  you  find 
it  necessary. 


18  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

How  paper  is  made.  A  brewery. 

The  printing  of  a  news-  Raising  tobacco. 

paper.  A  flour  mill. 

Taking  and  developing  a  An  automobile  factory. 

photograph.  A  steel  plant. 

The  coining  of  money.  The  Dead-Letter  OflSce. 

A  model  dairy.  A  model  barn. 


THE  CHARACTERISTIC  DIVERGENCES  OF 
PIGEONS* 

Thomas  Henry  Huxley 

AMONG  the  enormous  variety, — I  believe  there  are 
somewhere  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  kinds  of  pig- 
eons,— there  are  four  kinds  which  may  be  selected  as  repre- 
senting the  extremest  divergences  of  one  kind  from  another. 
Their  names  are  the  Carrier,  the  Pouter,  the  Fan  tail,  and 
the  Tumbler.  In  these  large  diagrams  that  I  have  here 
they  are  each  represented  in  their  relative  sizes  to  each 
other.  This  first  one  is  the  Carrier;  you  will  notice  this 
large  excrescence  on  its  beak;  it  has  a  comparatively 
small  head;  there  is  a  bare  space  round  the  eyes;  it  has 
a  long  neck,  a  very  long  beak,  very  strong  legs,  large  feet, 
long  wings,  and  so  on.  The  second  one  is  the  Pouter,  a 
very  large  bird,  with  very  long  legs  and  beak.  It  is  called 
the  Pouter  because  it  is  in  the  habit  of  causing  its  gullet 
to  swell  up  by  inflating  it  with  air.  I  ghould  tell  you  that 
all  pigeons  have  a  tendency  to  do  this  at  times,  but  in 
the  Pouter  it  is   carried   to  an  enormous  extent.     The 

*The  Perpetuation  of  Living  Beings.     {Man's  Place  in  Nature:  and 
other  Essays.     J.    M.    Dent    &    Co.) 


EXPOSITION  .     19 

birds  appear  to  be  quite  proud  of  their  power  of  swelling 
and  puffing  themselves  out  in  this  way;  and  I  think  it 
is  about  as  droll  a  sight  as  you  can  see  to  look  at  a  cage 
full  of  these  pigeons  puffing  and  blowing  themselves 
5  out  in  this  ridiculous  manner. 

This  diagram  is  a  representation  of  the  third  kind  I 
mentioned — the  Fantail.  It  is,  you  see,  a  small  bird,  with 
exceedingly  small  legs  and  a  very  small  beak.  It  is  most 
curiously  distinguished  by  the  size  and  extent  of  its  tail, 
10  which,  instead  of  containing  twelve  feathers,  may  have 
many  more, — say  thirty,  or  even  more, — I  believe  there 
are  some  with  as  many  as  forty-two.  This  bird  has  a 
curious  habit  of  spreading  out  the  feathers  of  its  tail  in 
such  a  way  that  they  reach  forward,  and  touch  its  head; 
15  and  if  this  can  be  accomplished,  I  believe  it  is  looked 
upon  as  a  point  of  great  beauty. 

But  here  is  the  last  great  variety, — the  Tumbler;  and 
of  that  great  variety,  one  of  the  principal  kinds,  and  one 
most  prized,  is  the  specimen  represented  here — the  short- 
en faced  Tumbler.  Its  beak,  you  see,  is  reduced  to  a  mere 
nothing.  Just  compare  the  beak  of  this  one  and  that  of 
the  first  one,  the  Carrier — I  believe  the  orthodox  com- 
parison of  the  head  and  beak  of  a  thoroughly  well-bred 
Tumbler  is  to  stick  an  oat  into  a  cherry,  and  that  will 
25  give  you  the  proper  relative  proportions  of  the  beak  and 
head.  The  feet  and  legs  are  exceedingly  small,  and  the 
bird  appears  to  be  quite  a  dwarf  when  placed  side  by  side 
with  this  great  Carrier. 

These  are  differences  enough  in  regard  to  their  external 
30  appearance;  but  these  differences  are  by  no  means  the 
whole  or  even  the  most  important  of  the  differences  which 
obtain  between  these  birds.  There  is  hardly  a  single 
point  of  their  structure  which  has  not  become  more  or 
less  altered;  and  to  give  you  an  idea  of  how  extensive 


20  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

these  alterations  are,  I  have  here  some  very  good  skele- 
tons, for  which  I  am  indebted  to  my  friend  Mr.  Teget- 
meier,  a  great  authority  in  these  matters;  by  means  of 
which,  if  you  examine  them  by-and-by,  you  will  be  able 
to  see  the  enormous  difference  in  their  bony  structures.       5 

I  had  the  privilege,  some  time  ago,  of  access  to  some 
important  MSS.  of  Mr.  Darwin,  who,  I  may  tell  you,  has 
taken  very  great  pains  and  spent  much  valuable  time  and 
attention  on  the  investigation  of  these  variations,  and 
getting  together  all  the  facts  that  bear  upon  them.  I  lo 
obtained  from  these  MSS.  the  following  summary  of  the 
differences  between  the  domestic  breeds  of  pigeons;  that 
is  to  say,  a  notification  of  the  various  points  in  which 
their  organization  differs.  In  the  first  place,  the  back  of 
the  skull  may  differ  a  good  deal,  and  the  development  of  15 
the  bones  of  the  face  may  vary  a  great  deal;  the  back 
varies  a  good  deal;  the  shape  of  the  lower  jaw  varies;  the 
tongue  varies  very  greatly,  not  only  in  correlation  to  the 
length  and  size  of  the  beak,  but  it  seems  also  to  have  a 
kind  of  independent  variation  of  its  own.  Then  the  20 
amount  of  naked  skin  round  the  eyes,  and  at  the  base  of 
the  beak,  may  vary  enormously;  so  may  the  length  of 
the  eyelids,  the  shape  of  the  nostrils,  and  the  length  of  the 
neck.  I  have  already  noticed  the  habit  of  blowing  out 
the  gullet,  so  remarkable  in  the  Pouter,  and  compara-  25 
tively  so  in  the  others.  There  are  great  differences,  too, 
in  the  size  of  the  female  and  the  male,  the  shape  of  the 
body,  the  number  and  width  of  the  processes  of  the  ribs, 
the  development  of  the  ribs,  and  the  size,  shape,  and 
development  of  the  breastbone.  We  may  notice,  too, —  30 
and  I  mention  the  fact  because  it  has  been  disputed  by 
what  is  assumed  to  be  high  authority, — the  variation  in 
the  number  of  the  sacral  vertebrae.  The  number  of  these 
varies  from  eleven  to  fourteen,   and   that  without  any 


EXPOSITION  21 

diminution  in  the  number  of  the  vertebrae  of  the  back  or 
of  the  tail.  Then  the  number  and  position  of  the  tail- 
feathers  may  vary  enormously,  and  so  may  the  number  of 
the  primary  and  secondary  feathers  of  the  wings.  Again, 
5  the  length  of  the  feet  and  of  the  beak, — although  they  have 
no  relation  to  each  other,  yet  appear  to  go  together, — 
that  is,  you  have  a  long  beak  wherever  you  have  long 
feet.  There  are  differences  also  in  the  periods  of  the 
acquirement  of  the  perfect  plumage, — the  size  and  shape 

10  of  the  eggs, — the  nature  of  flight,  and  the  powers  of 
flight, — so-called  ''homing''  birds  having  enormous  flying 
powers;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  little  Tumbler  is 
so  called  because  of  its  extraordinary  faculty  of  turning 
head  over  heels  in  the  air,  instead  of  pursuing  a  distinct 

15  course.  And,  lastly,  the  dispositions  and  voices  of  the 
birds  may  vary.  Thus  the  case  of  the  pigeons  shows 
you  that  there  is  hardly  a  single  particular, — ^whether  of 
instinct,  or  habit,  or  bony  structure,  or  of  plumage, — of 
either  the  internal  economy  or  the  external  shape,  in  which 

20  some  variation  or  change  may  not  take  place,  which  by 
selective  breeding,  may  become  perpetuated,  and  form 
the  foundation  of,  and  give  rise  to,  a  new  race. 

If  you  carry  in  your  mind's  eye  these  four  varieties  of 
pigeons,  you  will  bear  with  you  as  good  a  notion  as  you 

25  can  have,  perhaps,  of*  the  enormous  extent  to  which  a 
deviation  from  a  primitive  type  may  be  carried  by  means 
of  this  process  of  selective  breeding. 

Suggestions:  Observe  that  Huxley's  exposition  here  was 
evidently  accompanied  by  diagrams  and  pictures.  From  how 
much  explaining  do  these  relieve  him  ?  How  can  you  make  up 
for  the  absence  of  pictures  in  your  own  theme.? 

What  characteristics  does  Huxley  emphasize.?  Why?  How 
much  previous  knowledge  does  he  assume  on  the  part  of  his 
readers  or  hearers? 


22  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

External  divergences  of  the  Pug,  How  to  know  a  pine  tree  from 

the  Spaniel,  and   the  Mastiff.  a  maple  tree. 

The  difference  between  an  An-  How  to  know  an  orchid  when 

gora  cat  and  an  ordinary  cat.  you  see  one. 

How  to  know  a  duck   from  a  The    differences    between    a 

chicken.  Leyden  jar  and  a  voltaic  cell. 

The  difference  between  a  "  Ply-  External   differences   between 

mouth  Rock"  and  a    "Buff  two   kinds  of  typewriters. 

Orpington. " 


THE    METHOD    OF    SCIENTIFIC 
INVESTIGATION* 

Thomas  Henry  Huxley 

T^HE  method  of  scientific  investigation  is  nothing  but 
^      the  expression  of  the  necessary  mode  of  working  of 
the  human  mind.     It  is  simply  the  mode  at  which  all 
phenomena  are  reasoned  about,  rendered  precise  and  exact. 
There  is  no  more  difference,  but  there  is  just  the  same  5 
kind  of  difference,  between  the  mental  operations  of  a 
man  of  science  and  those  of  an  ordinary  person,  as  there 
is  between  the  operations  and  methods  of  a  baker  or  of  a 
butcher  weighing  out  his  goods  in  common  scales,  and 
the  operations  of  a  chemist  in  performing  a  difficult  and   10 
complex  analysis  by  means  of  his   balance  and   finely- 
graduated  weights.     It  is  not  that  the  action  of  the  scales 
in  the  one  case,  and  the  balance  in  the  other,  differ  in 
the  principles  of  their  construction  or  manner  of  working; 
but  the  beam  of  one  is  set  on  an  infinitely  finer  axis  than  15 
the  other,  and  of  course  turns  by  the  addition  of  a  much 
smaller  weight. 
*From  Man*s  Place  in  Nature:  and  other  Essays.    J.M.  Dent  &  Co. 


EXPOSITION  23 

You  will  understand  this  better,  perhaps,  if  I  give  you 
some  familiar  example.  You  have  all  heard  it  repeated, 
I  dare  say,  that  men  of  science  work  by  means  of  Induc- 
tion and  Deduction,  and  that  by  the  help  of  these  opera- 
5  tions,  they,  in  a  sort  of  sense,  wring  from  Nature  certain 
other  things,  which  are  called  Natural  Laws,  and  Causes, 
and  that  out  of  these,  by  some  cunning  skill  of  their 
own,  they  build  up  Hypotheses  and  Theories.  And  it  is 
imagined  by  many,  that  the  operations  of  the  common 

10  mind  can  be  by  no  means  compared  with  these  processes, 
and  that  they  have  to  be  acquired  by  a  sort  of  special 
apprenticeship  to  the  craft.  To  hear  all  these  large  words, 
you  would  think  that  the  mind  of  a  man  of  science  must 
be  constituted   differently  from  that  of  his  fellow-men; 

15  but  if  you  will  not  be  frightened  by  terms,  you  will  dis- 
cover that  you  are  quite  wrong,  and  that  all  these  terrible 
apparatus  are  being  used  by  yourselves  every  day  and 
every  hour  of  your  lives. 

There  is  a  well-known  incident  in  one  of  Moliere's  plays, 

20  where  the  author  makes  the  hero  express  unbounded 
delight  on  being  told  that  he  had  been  talking  prose  during 
the  whole  of  his  life.  In  the  same  way,  I  trust  that  you 
will  take  comfort,  and  be  delighted  with  yourselves,  on 
the  discovery  that  you  have  been  acting  on  the  prin- 

25  ciples  of  inductive  and  deductive  philosophy  during  the 
same  period.  Probably  there  is  not  one  here  who  has  not 
in  the  course  of  the  day  had  occasion  to  set  in  motion 
a  complex  train  of  reasoning,  of  the  very  same  kind, 
though  differing  of  course  in  degree,   as  that  which  a 

30  scientific  man  goes  through  in  tracing  the  causes  of 
natural  phenomena. 

A  very  trivial  circumstance  will  serve  to  exemplify  this. 
Suppose  you  go  into  a  fruiterer's  shop,  wanting  an  apple, — 
you  take  up  one,  and,  on  biting  it,  you  find  it  sour;  you 


24  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

look  at  it,  and  see  that  it  is  hard  and  green.  You  take 
up  another  one,  and  that  too  is  hard,  green,  and  sour. 
The  shopman  offers  you  a  third;  but,  before  biting  it 
you  examine  it,  and  find  that  it  is  hard  and  green,  and 
you  immediately  say  that  you  will  not  have  it,  as  it  must  5 
be  sour,  like  those  that  you  have  already  tried. 

Nothing  can  be  more  simple  than  that,  you  think;  but 
if  you  will  take  the  trouble  to  analyze  and  trace  out  into 
its  logical  elements  what  has  been  done  by  the  mind, 
you  will  be  greatly  surprised.  In  the  first  place,  you  have  10 
performed  the  operation  of  Induction.  You  found  that, 
in  two  experiences,  hardness  and  greenness  in  apples 
went  together  with  sourness.  It  was  so  in  the  first  case, 
and  it  was  confirmed  by  the  second.  True,  it  is  a  very 
small  basis,  but  still  it  is  enough  to  make  an  induction  15 
from;  you  generalize  the  facts,  and  you  expect  to  find 
sourness  in  apples  where  you  get  hardness  and  greenness. 
You  found  upon  that  a  general  law,  that  all  hard  and 
green  apples  are  sour;  and  that,  so  far  as  it  goes,  is  a 
perfect  induction.  Well,  having  got  your  natural  law  in  i20 
this  way,  when  you  are  offered  another  apple  which  you 
find  is  hard  and  green,  you  say,  "All  hard  and  green 
apples  are  sour;  this  apple  is  hard  and  green,  therefore 
this  apple  is  sour."  That  train  of  reasoning  is  what 
logicians  call  a  syllogism,  and  has  all  its  various  parts  and  25 
terms, — its  major  premise,  its  minor  premise,  and  its  con- 
clusion. And,  by  the  help  of  further  reasoning,  which,  if 
drawn  out,  would  have  to  be  exhibited  in  two  or  three 
other  syllogisms,  you  arrive  at  your  final  determination, 
"I  will  not  have  that  apple."  So  that,  you  see,  you  have  30 
in  the  first  place,  established  a  law  by  Induction,  and 
upon  that  you  have  founded  a  Deduction,  and  reasoned 
out  the  special  conclusion  of  the  particular  case.  Well 
now,  suppose,  having  got  your  law,  that  at  some  time 


EXPOSITION  25 

afterward,  you  are  discussing  the  qualities  of  apples  with 
a  friend :  you  will  say  to  him,  *'  It  is  a  very  curious  thing, 
— but  I  find  that  all  hard  and  green  apples  are  soilr!" 
Your  friend  says  to  you,  "But  how  do  you  know  that?" 

5  You  at  once  reply,  "Oh,  because  I  have  tried  them  over 
and  over  again,  and  have  always  found  them  to  be  so." 
Well,  if  we  were  talking  science  instead  of  common  sense, 
we  should  call  that  an  Experimental  Verification.  And, 
if  still  opposed,  you  go  further,  and  say,  "I  have  heard 

10  from  the  people  in  Somersetshire  and  Devonshire,  where 
a  large  number  of  apples  are  grown,  that  they  have 
observed  the  same  thing.  It  is  also  found  to  be  the  case 
in  Normandy,  and  in  North  America.  In  short,  I  find 
it  to  be  the  universal  experience  of  mankind  wherever 

15  attention  has  been  directed  to  the  subject. "  Whereupon, 
your  friend,  unless  he  is  a  very  unreasonable  man,  agrees 
with  you,  and  is  convinced  that  you  are  quite  right  in  the 
conclusion  you  have  drawn.  He  believes,  although  per- 
haps he  does  not  know  he  believes  it,  that  the  more  ex- 

20  tensive  verifications  are, — that  the  more  frequently  ex- 
periments have  been  made,  and  results  of  the  same 
kind  arrived  at, — that  the  more  varied  the  conditions 
under  which  the  same  results  are  attained,  the  more 
certain  is  the  ultimate  conclusion,  and  he  disputes  the 

25  question  no  further.  He  sees  that  the  experiment  has 
been  tried  under  all  sorts  of  conditions,  as  to  time,  place, 
and  people,  with  the  same  result;  and  he  says  with  you, 
therefore,  that  the  law  you  have  laid  down  must  be  a  good 
one,  and  he  must  believe  it. 

30  In  science  we  do  the  same  thing, — the  philosopher 
exercises  precisely  the  same  faculties,  though  in  a  much 
more  delicate  manner.  In  scientific  inquiry  it  becomes 
a  matter  of  duty  to  expose  a  supposed  law  to  every  possible 
kind  of  verification,  and  to  take  care,  moreover,  that 


26  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

this  is  done  intentionally,  and  not  left  to  a  mere  accident, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  apples.  And  in  science,  as  in  common 
life,  our  confidence  in  a  law  is  in  exact  proportion  to  the 
absence  of  variation  in  the  result  of  our  experimental 
verifications.  For  instance,  if  you  let  go  ^  your  grasp  5 
of  an  article  you  may  have  in  your  hand,  it  will  immediately 
fall  to  the  ground.  That  is  a  very  common  verification 
of  one  of  the  best  established  laws  of  nature — that  of 
gravitation.  The  method  by  which  men  of  science  es- 
tablish the  existence  of  that  law  is  exactly  the  same  as  IC 
that  by  which  we  have  established  the  trivial  proposition 
about  the  sourness  of  hard  and  green  apples.  But  we 
believe  it  in  such  an  extensive,  thorough,  and  unhesitating 
manner  because  the  universal  experience  of  mankind 
verifies  it,  and  we  can  verify  it  ourselves  at  any  time;  U 
and  that  is  the  strongest  possible  foundation  on  which  any 
natural  law  can  rest. 

So  much,  then,  by  way  of  proof  that  the  method  of 
establishing  laws  in  science  is  exactly  the  same  as  that 
pursued  in  common  life.  Let  us  now  turn  to  another  2( 
matter  (though  really  it  is  but  another  phase  of  the  same 
question),  and  that  is,  the  method  by  which,  from  the 
relations  of  certain  phenomena,  we  prove  that  some  stand 
in  the  position  of  causes  toward  the  others. 

I  want  to  put  the  case  clearly  before  you,  and  I  will  * 
therefore  show  you  what  I  mean  by  another  familiar 
example.  I  will  suppose  that  one  of  you,  on  coming 
down  in  the  morning  to  the  parlor  of  your  house,  finds 
that  a  tea-pot  and  some  spoons  which  had  been  left  in 
the  room  on  the  previous  evening  are  gone, — the  window  ^< 
is  open,  and  you  observe  the  mark  of  a  dirty  hand  on 
the  window-frame,  and  perhaps,  in  addition  to  that,  you 
notice  the  impress  of  a  hob-nailed  shoe  on  the  gravel 
outside.     All  these  phenomena  have  struck  your  atten- 


EXPOSITION  27 

tion  instantly,  and  before  two  seconds  have  passed  you 
say,  "Oh,  somebody  has  broken  open  the  window,  entered 
the  room,  and  run  off  with  the  spoons  and  the  tea-pot!" 
That  speech  is  out  of  your  mouth  in  a  moment.  And 
5  you  will  probably  add,  "I  know  there  has;  I  am  quite 
sure  of  it!"  You  mean  to  say  exactly  what  you  know; 
but  in  reality  you  are  giving  expression  to  what  is,  in 
all  essential  particulars,  an  Hypothesis.  You  do  not 
know  it  at  all;  it  is  nothing  but  an  hypothesis  rapidly 

10  framed  in  your  own  mind!  And,  it  is  an  hypothesis 
founded  on  a  long  train  of  inductions  and  deduc- 
tions. 

What  are  those  inductions  and  deductions,  and  how 
have  you  got  at  this  hypothesis?     You  have  observed, 

15  in  the  first  place,  that  the  window  is  open;  but  by  a  train 
of  reasoning  involving  many  Inductions  and  Deductions, 
you  have  probably  arrived  long  before  at  the  General 
Law — and  a  very  good  one  it  is — that  windows  do  not 
open    of   themselves;   and    you    therefore   conclude   that 

20  something  has  opened   the  window.     A  second  general 
law  that  you  have  arrived  at  in  the  same  way  is,  that  tea- 
pots and  spoons  do  not  go  out  of  a  window  spontaneously, 
and  you  are  satisfied  that,  as  they  are  not  now  where  you 
.  left  them,  they  have  been  removed.     In  the  third  place, 

25  you  look  at  the  marks  on  the  window-sill,  and  the  shoe- 
marks  outside,  and  you  say  that  in  all  previous  experience 
the  former  kind  of  mark  has  never  been  produced  by  any- 
thing else  but  the  hand  of  a  human  being;  and  the  same 
experience  shows  that  no  other  animal  but  man  at  present 

30  wears  shoes  with  hob-nails  in  them  such  as  would  produce 
the  marks  in  the  gravel.  I  do  not  know,  even  if  we  could 
discover  any  of  those  "missing  links"  that  are  talked 
about,  that  they  would  help  us  to  any  other  conclusion! 
At  any  rate  the  law  which  states  our  present  experience 


28  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

is  strong  enough  for  my  present  purpose.  You  next  reach 
the  conclusion,  that  as  these  kinds  of  marks  have  not  been 
left  by  any  other  animals  than  men,  or  are  liable  to  be 
formed  in  any  other  way  than  by  a  man's  hand  and  shoe, 
the  marks  in  question  have  been  formed  by  a  man  in  that  5 
way.  You  have,  further,  a  general  law,  founded  on 
observation  and  experience,  and  that,  too,  is,  I  am  sorry 
to  say,  a  very  universal  and  unimpeachable  one, — that 
some  men  are  thieves;  and  you  assume  at  once  from  all 
these  premises — and  that  is  what  constitutes  your  hypo-  10 
thesis — that  the  man  who  made  the  marks  outside  and  on 
the  window-sill,  opened  the  window,  got  into  the  room, 
and  stole  your  tea-pot  and  spoons.  You  have  now  arrived 
at  a  Vera  Causa; — ^you  have  assumed  a  Cause  which 
it  is  plain  is  competent  to  produce  all  the  phenomena  15 
you  have  observed.  You  can  explain  all  these  pheno- 
mena only  by  the  hypothesis  of  a  thief.  But  that  is  a 
hypothetical  conclusion,  of  the  justice  of  which  you 
have  no  absolute  proof  at  all;  it  is  only  rendered  highly 
probable  by  a  series  of  inductive  and  deductive  reason-  20 
ings. 

I  suppose  your  first  action,  assuming  that  you  are  a 
man  of  ordinary  common  sense,  and  that  you  have  es- 
tablished this  hypothesis  to  your  own  satisfaction,  will 
very  likely  be  to  go  off  for  the  police,  and  set  them  on  25 
the  track  of  the  burglar,  with  the  view  to  the  recovery 
of  your  property.  But  just  as  you  are  starting  with  this 
object,  some  person  comes  in,  and  on  learning  what  you 
are  about,  says,  "My  good  friend,  you  are  going  on  a 
great  deal  too  fast.  How  do  you  know  that  the  man  30 
who  really  made  the  marks  took  the  spoons?  It  might 
have  been  a  monkey  that  took  them,  and  the  man  may 
have  merely  looked  in  afterward."  You  would  probably 
reply,  "Well,  that  is  all  very  well,  but  you  see  it  is  con- 


EXPOSITION  29 

trary  to  all  experience  of  the  way  tea-pots  and  spoons 
are  abstracted;  so  that,  at  any  rate,  your  hypothesis  is 
less  probable  than  mine."  While  you  are  talking  the 
thing  over  in  this  way,  another  friend  arrives,  one  of  that 

5  good  kind  of  people  that  I  was  talking  of  a  little  while 
ago.  And  he  might  say,  "Oh,  my  dear  sir,  you  are 
certainly  going  on  a  great  deal  too  fast.  You  are  most 
presumptuous.  You  admit  that  all  these  occurrences 
took  place  when  you  were  fast  asleep,  at  a  time  when  you 

10  could  not  possibly  have  known  anything  about  what  was 
taking  place.  How  do  you  know  that  the  laws  of  Nature 
are  not  suspended  during  the  night  ?  It  may  be  that  there 
has  been  some  kind  of  supernatural  interference  in  this  case. " 
In  point  of  fact,  he  declares  that  your  hypothesis  is  one 

15  of  which  you  cannot  at  all  demonstrate  the  truth,  and 
that  you  are  by  no  means  sure  that  the  laws  of  Nature 
are  the  same  when  you  are  asleep  as  when  you  are 
awake. 

Well,   now,   you   cannot   at  the  moment  answer  that 

20  kind  of  reasoning.  You  feel  that  your  worthy  friend  has 
you  somewhat  at  a  disadvantage.  You  will  feel  perfectly 
convinced  in  your  own  mind,  however,  that  you  are  quite 
right,  and  you  say  to  him,  *'My  good  friend,  I  can  only 
be  guided  by  the  natural  probabilities  of  the  case,  and 

25  if  you  will  be  kind  enough  to  stand  aside  and  permit  me 
to  pass,  I  will  go  and  fetch  the  police."  Well,  we  will 
suppose  that  your  journey  is  successful,  and  that  by  good 
luck  you  meet  with  a  policeman;  that  eventually  the 
burglar  is  found  with  your  property  on  his  person,  and 

30  the  marks  correspond  to  his  hand  and  to  his  shoes.  Prob- 
ably any  jury  would  consider  those  facts  a  very  good 
experimental  verification  of  your  hypothesis,  touching 
the  cause  of  the  abnormal  phenomena  observed  in  your 
parlor,  and  would  act  accordingly. 


so  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Now,  in  this  supposititious  case,  I  have  taken  pheno- 
mena of  a  very  common  kind,  in  order  that  you  might 
see  what  are  the  different  steps  in  an  ordinary  process  of 
reasoning,  if  you  will  only  take  the  trouble  to  analyze  it 
carefully.  All  the  operations  I  have  described,  you  will  5 
see,  are  involved  in  the  mind  of  any  man  of  sense  in  lead- 
ing him  to  a  conclusion  as  to  the  course  he  should  take 
in  order  to  make  good  a  robbery  and  punish  the  offender. 
I  say  that  you  are  led,  in  that  case,  to  your  conclusion  by 
exactly  the  same  train  of  reasoning  as  that  which  a  man  H 
of  science  pursues  when  he  is  endeavoring  to  discover 
the  origin  and  laws  of  the  most  occult  phenomena.  The 
process  is,  and  always  must  be,  the  same;  and  precisely 
the  same  mode  of  reasoning  was  employed  by  Newton 
and  Laplace  in  their  endeavors  to  discover  and  define  1^ 
the  causes  of  the  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies, 
as  you,  with  your  own  common  sense,  would  employ  to 
detect  a  burglar.  The  only  difference  is,  that  the  nature 
of  the  inquiry  being  more  abstruse,  every  step  has  to  be 
most  carefully  watchecj,  so  that  there  may  not  be  a  single  2( 
crack  or  flaw  in  your  hypotliesis.  A  flaw  or  crack  in 
many  of  the  hypotheses  of  daily  life  may  be  of  little  or  no 
moment  as  affecting  the  general  correctness  of  the  con- 
clusions at  which  we  may  arrive;  but  in  a  scientific  in- 
quiry a  fallacy,  great  or  small,  is  always  of  importance,  ^ 
and  is  sure  to  be  in  the  long  run  constantly  productive 
of  mischievous,  if  not  fatal  results. 

Do  not  allow  yourselves  to  be  misled  by  the  common 
notion  that  an  hypothesis  is  untrustworthy  simply  because 
it  is  an  hypothesis.  It  is  often  urged,  in  respect  to  some  3( 
scientific  conclusion,  that,  after  all,  it  is  only  an  hypo- 
thesis. But  what  more  have  we  to  guide  us  in  nine-tenths 
of  the  most  important  affairs  of  daily  life  than  hypotheses, 
and  often  verv  ill-based  ones  ?     So  that  in  science,  where 


EXPOSITION  31 

the  evidence  of  an  hypothesis  is  subjected  to  the  most 
rigid  examination,  we  may  rightly  pursue  the  same  course. 
You  may  have  hypotheses  and  hypotheses.  A  man  may 
say,  if  he  likes,  that  the  moon  is  made  of  green  cheese: 
5  that  is  an  hypothesis.  But  another  man,  who  has  de- 
voted a  great  deal  of  time  and  attention  to  the  subject, 
and  availed  himself  of  the  most  powerful  telescopes  and 
the  results  of  the  observations  of  others,  declares  that  in 
his  opinion   it  is  probably  composed  of  materials  very 

10  similar  to  those  of  which  our  own  earth  is  made  up:  and 
that  is  also  only  an  hypothesis.  But  I  need  not  tell  you 
that  there  is  an  enormous  difference  in  the  value  of  the 
two  hypotheses.  That  one  which  is  based  on  sound 
scientific   knowledge    is    sure   to   have    a   corresponding 

15  value;  and  that  which  is  a  mere  hasty,  random  guess, 
is  likely  to  have  but  little  value.  Every  great  step  in 
our  progress  in  discovering  causes  has  been  made  in 
exactly  the  same  way  as  that  which  I  have  detailed  to 
you.     A  person  observing  the  occurrence  of  certain  facts 

20  and  phenomena  asks,  naturally''  enough,  what  process, 
what  kind  of  operation  known  to  occur  in  nature  applied 
to  the  particular  case,  will  unravel  and  explain  the  mys- 
tery? Hence  you  have  the  scientific  hypothesis;  and 
its  value  will  be  proportionate  to  the  care  and  complete- 

25  ness  with  which  its  basis  had  been  tested  and  verified. 
It  is  in  these  matters  as  in  the  commonest  affairs  of 
practical  life:  the  guess  of  the  fool  will  be  folly,  while 
the  guess  of  the  wise  man  will  contain  wisdom.  In  all 
cases,  you  see  that  the  value  of  the  result  depends  on  the 

30  patience  and  faithfulness  with  which  the  investigator 
applies  to  his  hypothesis  every  possible  kind  of  verifica- 
tion. 


32  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

SOME   RECENT   THEORIES    OF  THE    ETHER* 
W.  A.  Shenstone 

T  THINK  I  can  scarcely  contrive  a  more  fitting  preface 
-^  to  an  article  on  "the  ether"  than  tlje  two  quotations 
which  follow.  They  indicate  in  the  fewest  possible  words 
how  far  we  have  traveled  since  the  days  when  "the  ether" 
was  invented  by  Huygens,  for  the  simple  purpose  of  ac-  5 
counting  for  the  propagation  of  light. 

The  first  of  these  quotations  is  taken  from  the  late 
Professor  Preston's  book  on  Light,  and  it  runs  as  follows: 
"The  present  tendency  indeed  of  physical  science  is  to 
regard  all  the  phenomena  of  Nature,  and  even  of  matter  l 
itself,  as  manifestations  of  energy  stored  in  'the  ether.'" 
The  second  comes  from  a  "Silliman  Lecture,"  delivered 
at  Yale  University,  by  Professor  J.  J.  Thomson,  about 
three  years  ago.  On  one  view  of  the  constitution  of  matter, 
said  Professor  Thomson,  "All  mass  is  mass  of  the  ether,  1 
all  momentum,  momentum  of  the  ether,  and  all  kinetic 
energy,  kinetic  energy  of  the  ether."  These  two  ex- 
tracts will  suflSciently  explain  the  appearance  of  an  article 
on  this  subject  in  the  Cornhill  Magazine.  For,  if  they 
truly  represent,  in  any  considerable  degree,  the  present  'i^ 
trend  of  physical  speculation,  could  any  scientific  topic 
be  more  important  or  more  interesting  ? 

Only  as  recently  as  the  year  1894,  when  he  was  President 
of  the  British  Association,  at  its  last  meeting  at  Oxford, 
the  late  Marquis  of  Salisbury  told  the  assembled  parlia-  2i 
ment  of  science  that  at  present  we  know  absolutely  nothing 
about  this  all-pervading  entity,  the  ether,  except  this  one 
fact — that  it  can  be  made  to  undulate,  and  that  it  performs 
even  this  solitary  function  in  an  abnormal  fashion  which 
*The  Cornhill  Magazine,  1905. 


EXPOSITION  33 

has  caused  infinite  perplexity.  It  is  my  object  to  tell 
something  about  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge  of 
this  elusive  entity,  and  to  indicate,  as  far  as  I  may,  the 
lines  followed  by  some  recent  speculations  concerning  its 
5  nature  and  its  relations  to  those  other  manifestations  named 
by  us  matter  and  electricity. 

First,  let  us  consider  how  it  has  come  about  that  this 
hypothetical  medium  called,  or  I  should  say  recalled,  into 
existence  a  century  ago  by  Dr.  Thomas  Young  for  the 

10  single  purpose  of  explaining  the  phenomena  of  light,  now 
plays  so  dominating  a  part  as  that  assigned  it  in  the  two 
passages  quoted  above. 

I  need  hardly  remind  my  readers  that  the  notion  that 
there  exists  an  invisible  intangible  material,  filling  all  that 

15  part  of  space  not  occupied  by  ordinary  matter,  is  one  of  the 
oldest  in  science.  But  many  of  them  may  not  know  that, 
at  one  time,  ethers  were  created  by  men  of  science  almost 
as  plentifully  as  blackberries  by  a  blackberry  bush,  that 
they  were  called  into  existence  in  every  difficulty  with 

20  almost  reckless  profusion.  Ethers  have  been  invented, 
as  Clerk  Maxwell  has  said,  "for  the  planets  to  swim  in, 
to  constitute  electric  atmospheres  and  magnetic  effluvia, 
to  convey  sensations  from  one  part  of  our  body  to  another, 
till  all  space  was  filled  several  times  over  with  ethers," 

25  with  the  result  that  science  in  the  end  turned  restive  under 
this  "multiplication  of  entities,"  this  constant  piling  up, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  ethereal  population  of  space  and,  after 
a  period  of  reaction  during  which  it  became  almost  a 
point  of  honor  to  discard  the  assistance  of  ethers,  now 

30  contents  itself  with  a  single  ether — viz.,  that  invented  by 
Huygens  in  1690 — to  explain  the  propagation  of  light. 
But  this  single  ether,  as  we  shall  see,  has  to  carry  a  heavy 
burden  and  to  perform  many  and  sometimes  incongruous 
functions.     It  is,  as  Miss  Agnes  Gierke  has  wittily  re- 


84  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

marked,   at  once   the   universal   provider  and   universal 
messenger.     It  is  Atlas  and  Mercury  rolled  into  one. 

It  may  be  said,  I  think,  in  a  general  way,  that  our 
single  ether  owes  its  survival  to  the  unwillingness  of 
science  to  admit  the  possibility  of  "action  at  a  distance,"  5 
its  unwillingness  to  admit,  for  example,  that  gravity  is  a 
primary  property  of  masses  incapable  of  explanation,  and 
acting  at  all  distances  across  empty  space;  for  it  follows 
from  this  that  when  the  undulatory  theory  of  light  was 
established  by  Young  and  Fresnel  in  the  early  part  of  the  10 
last  century,  the  conception  of  a  luminiferous  ether  was 
accepted  as  a  necessary  part  of  the  theory.  How  could 
waves  of  light  and  heat  emitted,  for  example,  by  the  sun 
reach  the  earth  unless  some  medium  capable  of  undulating 
occupied  the  interstellar  space  between  them?  For  if  15 
waves  travel  from  the  sun  to  the  earth,  then  is  it  not  evident 
that  these  waves  must  be  waves  of  something  or  waves 
in  something?  Or,  to  look  at  the  matter  from  another 
point  of  view,  if  light  be  a  manifestation  of  energy,  which 
is  ex  hypothesi  indestructible,  and  if  it  be  not  carried  to  us  ^0 
by  minute  particles,  as  Newton  supposed,  then  what  be- 
comes of  it  during  the  eight  minutes  which  elapse  between 
the  moment  when  it  leaves  the  sun,  and  that  at  which  it 
reaches  the  earth's  atmosphere  ?  Where  is  it  stored  during 
those  eight  minutes  when  it  is  neither  on  the  sun  nor  on  25 
the  earth  ?  The  answer  to  these  questions  is  this :  The 
missing  energy  is  in  the  ether,  and  the  propagation  of 
light  across  the  interstellar  space,  and  anywhere  and  every- 
where, depends  upon  waves  in  this  ether  which  fills  all 
space  and  permeates  all  matter.  i^O 

Most  of  us  will  agree  that,  if  we  accept  the  undulatory 
theory  of  light,  we  are  bound  to  admit  the  existence  of 
some  medium  such  as  the  ether.  But  when  we  attempt 
to  form  a  mental  picture  of  this  ether,  even  if  we  neglect 


EXPOSITION  35 

for  the  moment  all  its  properties  except  its  optical  properties, 
we  find  ourselves  in  difficulties,  for  none  of  us  have  ever 
met  with  anything  like  it  before.  It  cannot  be  a  gas,  for 
light  passes  through  an  exhausted  vessel,  and  through  the 

5  interstellar  void,  which  we  believe  contains  no  gas;  and 
for  similar  reasons,  still  less  can  it  be  regarded  as  a  liquid 
or  a  solid,  though  it  must  be  incompressible  and  resist 
cutting  even  more  strongly  than  steel  itself.  One  thing, 
as  Lord  Salisbury  said,  we  do  know  about  the  ether.     If 

10  it  exists  at  all,  it  can  undulate.  We  feel  we  tread  solid 
ground  here,  for  if  the  ether  could  not  undulate,  then  it 
could  not  transmit  the  vibrations  which  we  call  light. 
The  ethereal  undulations  which  constitute  light  must  differ 
widely  from  the  motions  which  originate  the  waves  of  the 

15  sea,  or  the  aerial  disturbances  known  as  sound,  and  the 
elasticity  of  the  ether  must  be  of  a  different  order  from 
that  of  the  familiar  gases,  liquids,  and  solids.  Air  yields 
to  pressure,  and  sound  depends  upon  oscillations  of  its 
particles  backward   and  forward  along  the   line   of  pro- 

20  pagation  of  the  audible  disturbances.  The  ether,  on  the 
other  hand,  must  be  regarded  as  incompressible;  for  the 
properties  of  light  require  us  to  assume  that  light-waves 
are  not  produced  by  the  compression  and  rarefaction  of  a 
medium  like  the  air,  that  they  are  not  waves  such  as 

25  might  be  produced,  for  example,  if  the  separate  type  on 
this  page  should  presently  begin  to  oscillate  backward 
and  forward  from  left  to  right,  and  right  to  left,  along 
the  lines  of  print,  but  transverse  waves  such  as  we  should 
have  before  us  if  the  type  were  to   swing  upward  and 

30  downward  across  the  lines  so  as  to  produce  more  or  less 
the  effect  suggested  by  the  following  diagram. 


36  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Now,  it  is  difficult  to  picture  a  substance  which  we  cannot 
weigh,  which  is  as  rigid  as  steel  to  pressure,  and  yet  yields, 
to  some  extent,  to  the  distortional  stresses  that  will  account 
for  the  propagation  in  it  of  luminous  undulations.  Nor 
are  our  difficulties  diminished  when  we  remember  that  we  5 
must  conceive  this  bewildering  substance  as  filling  all 
space,  permeating  the  inmost  recesses  of  all  matter,  solid, 
liquid,  and  gaseous  (for  in  its  absence  how  could  these 
transmit  light  and  other  electromagnetic  disturbances?); 
rigid,  as  I  have  said,  as  steel,  and  yet  permitting  material  10 
particles  like  grains  of  sand  or  the  earth  to  move  freely 
through  it.  Clearly  the  most  learned  of  us  has  no  ex- 
perience to  appeal  to  here.  How  can  we  draw  a  mental 
picture  of  such  stuff  as  this?  Think  of  men  blind  from 
their  birth  groping  their  way  through  a  world  they  have  15 
never  seen,  and  you  will  have  some  conception  of  the 
difficulties  which  stand  in  our  way. 

But  on  fuller  thought  you  will  see  also  that  the  problem 
may  not  be  altogether  beyond  our  powers.  The  blind 
man  with  his  stick  learns  much  that  is  true  about  the  world  20 
he  lives  in — sufficient,  in  fact,  to  enable  him  to  construct 
in  his  mind  a  useful,  if  imperfect,  hypothesis  or  working 
model  of  his  invisible  envir6nment;  and  so,  similarly,  with 
the  resources  at  our  command,  limited  though  they  may 
be,  why  should  we  not  discover  a  great  deal  about  this  25 
ether  which  we  can  neither  see  nor  feel,  but  which  exists, 
as  we  are  convinced,  in  us  and  around  us  ? 

The  picture  we  may  form,  like  a  blind  man's  model  of 
his  unseen  world,  may  be,  at  first,  but  an  imperfect  and 
colorless  reproduction  of  the  reality.     But  what  of  that?  30 
It  will  grow  more  true  and  more  perfect,  and  in  time  may 
even  gain  something  corresponding  to  color,  if  we  press  on. 

But  while  the  task  of  forming  a  clear  idea  or  mental 
picture  of  the  ether  constitutes  one  of  the  most  difficult 


EXPOSITION  37 

labors  allotted  to  science,  even  when  we  consider  only  its 
function  of  propagating  the  transverse  vibrations  which 
constitute  light,  the  difficulty  of  that  problem  is  increased 
a  hundred -fold  when  we  burden  our  medium  with  the  duty 
5  of  transmitting  the  pull  of  gravity  from  particle  to  particle, 
and  from  world  to  world,  and  seek  to  evolve  from  it  matter 
in  its  myriad  phases,  and  electrons,  that  is  electricity — 
if,  indeed,  matter  and  electricity  really  be  distinct,  and  not 
merely  two  different  phases  of  a  single  primary  material, 

10  viz.,  "the  ether"  itself. 

Needless  to  say,  recent  speculations  on  the  subject 
before  us  do  not  all  start  from  a  common  point.  Two  of 
the  chief  of  these  attempts  to  sound  the  depths  deal  with 
matter  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  engineer  or  physicist, 

15  while  in  a  third  case  the  picture  is  drawn  for  us  by  the 
eminent  Russian  chemist,  Professor  Mendeleeff.  The 
authors  of  tljie  former,  starting  with  the  functions  of  the 
ether,  endeavor  to  give  us  pictures  or  models  more  or  less 
precise  of  a  medium  which  might  conceivably  execute 

20  those  functions.  Professor  Mendeleeff,  on  the  other 
hand,  starting  with  the  eighty  elements  known  to  the 
chemist,  attempts  to  work  backward  from  these  to  a 
mind  picture  of  the  ether.  Let  us  first  go  over  the  ground 
in  company  with  the  chemist,  and  learn  what  he  has  to 

25  tell  us. 

Mendeleeff  takes  for  his  starting  point  the  great  peri- 
odic law  of  chemistry,  which  he  did  so  much  to  establish, 
and  the  modern  discovery  of  the  inactive  gases  of  the 
atmosphere,  argon,  helium,  neon,  xenon,    and    krypton. 

30  He  asks  us  to  believe  that  the  ether  is  an  extremely  in- 
active and  extremely  attenuated  gas,  and  then  attempts 
to  apply  the  periodic  law  to  the  discovery  of  this  gas,  or 
rather  to  the  purpose  of  proving  that  such  a  gas  exists, 
or  may  exist,  through  the  universe. 


38 


A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 


According  to  the  periodic  law  of  Newlands  and  Men- 
deleeff,  the  properties  of  the  chemical  atoms  vary  periodical- 
ly with  their  weights  in  such  a  manner  that  if  we  arrange 
the  elements  in  the  order  of  these  weights,  we  shall  find 
that  similar  variations  in  their  properties  recur  at  more  5 
or  less  regular  intervals.  Thus,  if  we  write  down  in  this 
order  lithium  and  the  thirteen  elements  which  follow  it, 


VIZ.: 


Lithium 

Beryllium          Boron 

Carbon 

7.0 

9.0                   11.0 

12.0 

Sodium 

Magnesium       Aluminum 

Silicon 

23.0 

24.0                   27.0 

28.0 

Nitrogen 

Oxygen 

Fluorine 

14.0 

16.0 

19.0 

Phosphorus 

Sulphur 

Chlorine 

31.0 

32.0 

35.0 

we   find    they    form   seven    successive    pairs,    each    pair 
so   much    alike  that  if  we  know  the  properties  of  one   10 
member  of  any  pair  and  the  properties  of  its  compounds, 
we  can  state  with  considerable  certainty  the  character 
of  the  second  member,  and  forecast  the  characters  of  its 
compounds   with   other   elements.     Thus,   for   example, 
if  we  know  that  sodium,  the  second  element  in  the  first   15 
pair,  is  a  metal  which  decomposes  water,  and  that  its 
oxide  is  strongly  alkaline,  caustic,  and  able  to  form  a  soap 
when  heated  with  oil,  we  may  reasonably  conclude  that 
lithium  also  is  a  metal  which  will  act  more  or  less  strongly 
on  water,  and  that  its  oxide,  like  that  of  sodium,  is  alkaline,   20 
caustic,  and  able  to  saponify  oils  and  fats.     Now,  the 
whole  of  the  elements  can  be  arranged  in  a  number  of 
series  like  those  given  above  with  more  or  less  satisfactory 
results,   but  though   the  two   series   I  have  selected   to 
illustrate  the  law  are,  as  it  happens,  complete,  this  is  not  25 
true  of  every  series,  and  when  Mendeleeff  originally  drew 


EXPOSITION  39 

up  his  table  of  the  elements  he  found  it  necessary  to  leave 
many  blank  spaces  in  it.  In  fact,  these  blank  spaces  were 
so  numerous  that  he  might  very  well  have  concluded 
that  the  whole  system  was  wrong.  Fortunately,  he  did 
5  not  do  this,  but,  on  the  contrary,  pointed  out  that  the 
occurrence  of  such  spaces  was  .to  be  expected,  that  it  was 
not  likely  that  chemists  had  as  yet  become  aware  of  all 
the  elements  in  the  universe  or  even  on  the  earth,  and  that 
these  vacant  places  might  well  be  supposed  to  correspond 

10  to  elements  which  exist  somewhere  and  might  yet  be  dis- 
covered. Indeed,  he  went  much  further  than  this.  On 
the  strength  of  his  opinion  he  deduced  the  properties  and 
atomic  weights  of  some  of  the  missing  elements.  And  with 
most  triumphant  results.     In  a  few  years,  when  the  three 

15  new  elements  gallium,  scandium,  and  germanium  were 
discovered,  each  was  found  to  fill  a  vacant  place  in  Men- 
deleeff's  table,  each  had  an  atomic  weight  corresponding 
to  that  of  one  of  the  missing  elements,  and  each  had  the 
properties  which  Mendeleeff  had  foreseen  and  foretold 

20  as  likely  to  be  exhibited  by  the  element  having  that  par- 
ticular atomic  weight)  Thus  the  periodic  law  became  firm- 
ly established.  It  not  only  coordinated  the  known 
elements,  it  afforded  in  addition  a  simple  and  trustworthy 
means  of  foretelling  the  existence  of  others  still  unknown. 

25  But  though  the  periodic  law  could  be  employed  in  pre- 
dicting the  existence  of  many  unknown  elements,  it  did 
not,  and  in  fact  could  not,  enable  Mendeleeff  to  foretell 
the  existence  of  argon,  helium,  and  their  companions,  for 
no  inactive  element  like  these  was  known  when  the  law 

30  was  first  enunciated.  Therefore,  when  these  were  dis- 
covered it  became  necessary  to  extend  the  table  drawn  up 
by  the  great  Russian  chemist  by  adding  to  it  a  new  group. 
This  addition  at  once  placed  him  in  a  position  to  predict 
the  existence  of  elements  of  the  inactive  or  argon  type, 


40  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  enabled  him  to  form  his  chemical  conception  of  the 
ether. 

The  element  which  has  the  lightest  atom  known  to  us, 
if  for  the  present  we  exclude  the  coronium  of  the  sun's 
corona,  is  hydrogen.     That  which  has  the  heaviest  atom  5 
is  uranium,  and  the  respective  atomic  weights  of  these 
elements  are  approximately  as   1  to  240.*     When  Men- 
deleeff  first  used  the  periodic  law  as  a  means  of  predicting 
the  existence  of  certain  unknown  elements,  he  followed 
what  mathematicians  call   the  method   of  interpolation;  10 
that  is,  he  inserted  the  predicted  new  elements  among  the 
rest,   at  points  where  obvious  gaps  occurred,   deducing 
their  properties  from  those  of  the  elements  around  them. 
Accordingly  all  the  elements  thus  predicted  fell  within  the 
limits  mentioned  above:  none  of  them  had  atoms  lighter  15 
than  hydrogen  atoms,  and  none  had  atoms  heavier  than 
those  of  uranium.     In  the  case  of  the  ether,  however,  tlie 
method  of  prediction  was  of  necessity  different.     There 
can  be  no  doubt,  if  we  admit  that  the  hypothesis  is  in  any 
degree  valid,  that  the  ether  of  Mendeleeff  must  consist  20 
of  particles  vastly  smaller  than  those  of  the  lightest  gas, 
and  far  smaller,  again,  than   even  the  electrons  of  the 
Crookes  vacuum  tube,  which  are  a  thousand  times  smaller 
than  the  atoms  of  hydrogen;  for  the  ether  must  not  only 
be  able  to  penetrate  solids  slightly  as  hydrogen  does,  or  25 
somewhat  freely  like  the  electrons,  but  to  an  extent  far 
transcending  anything  we  can  imagine  from  our  experience 
with  these.     Therefore  it  was   impossible  to  adopt  the 
method  of  interpolation  in  the  case  of  the  ether,  for  no 
place  could  be  found  in  Mendeleeff 's  table  for  an  element  30 
having  atoms  thousands  and  thousands  of  times  lighter 
than  hydrogen  atoms.     In  fact,  it  was  necessary  to  ex- 

*This  means  that  an  atom  of  uranium  weighs  as  much  as  240  atomis 
of  hydrogen. 


EXPOSITION  41 

trapolate  the  ether;  to  venture,  that  is,  outside  the  limits 
of  the  periodic  law  into  regions  beyond  the  range 
of  actual  experience.  The  results  of  Mendeleeff's  ex- 
cursion into  these  regions  are  as  follows:  First,  he  predicts 

5  the  existence  of  a  new  inactive  element  whose  atoms  are 
not  more  than  four-tenths  as  heavy  as  those  of  hydrogen. 
This,  as  he  foresees,  may  very  possibly  be  the  coronium 
whose  spectrum  is  clearly  visible  in  the  solar  corona,  which 
is  already  suspected  to  occur  on  this  earth  among  the  gases 

10  belched  out  by  volcanoes.  And  secondly,  after  inventing 
a  new  series  which,  however,  includes  at  present  no  known 
element,  he  infers  the  existence  of  yet  another  new  element, 
X,  which  he  considers  to  be  the  lightest  of  the  elements, 
the  most  mobile  gas,  the  element  least  apt  of  all  to  combine 

15  with  others,  and  in  addition  an  all-permeating  and  pene- 
trating substance.  Here  then  is  Mendeleeff's  theory  of 
the  ether.  In  a  sentence,  the  ether  is  an  inactive  element 
having  excessively  light  atoms.  That  such  an  element 
may  exist  does  not  seem  altogether  inconceivable,   and 

20  chemists  will  admire  the  ingenious  process  by  which  the 
great  master  has  secured  this  aftermath  of  the  periodic 
law.  But  whether  this  mobile  element  can  be  shown  to 
constitute  the  ether  is  another  question. 

Though  the  data  afforded  by  the  table  of  known  atomic 

25  weights  enables  Mendeleeff  to  calculate  the  weight  of  the 
atom  of  the  heavier  of  the  two  new  elements  thus  predicted, 
since  its  value  carries  us  but  little  beyond  the  range  of 
actual  experience,  they  are  Jiot  equally  helpful  in  the  case 
of  X.     In  fact,  it  must  be  admitted  that  there  is  not  yet 

30  much  real  evidence  of  the  existence  of  x,  and  the  hypothesis, 
so  pleasing  to  the  chemist,  must  be  declared  to  be  not 
proven;  nor,  indeed,  does  its  distinguished  author  do  much 
more  than  put  it  forward  as  a  suggestion  which  deserves 
to  be  considered.     It  is  not,  I  believe,  denied  that  the 


42  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

phenomena  of  light  could,  given  certain  conditions,  be 
accounted  for  upon  a  hypothesis  of  this  order.  But 
before  such  an  ether  as  that  of  Mendeleeff  can  be  accepted, 
it  must  be  established  that  the  particles  which  compose 
it  move,  broadly  speaking,  with  the  velocity  of  light  in  5 
every  direction,  that  their  free  paths  are  of  such  vast  length 
that  collisions  among  them  can  never  occur,  that  it  is 
impossible  for  vibrating  bodies  to  impress  upon  them  some 
property,  such  as  rotation  about  an  axis,  which  shall  not 
interfere  with  their  motion  of  translation;  and  lastly,  that  IC 
light  shall  be  shown  to  consist  in  the  alternation  of  the 
average  value  of  the  property  in  question. 

Now  let  us  turn  to  the  pictures  drawn  by  the  physicists. 

Of  all  the  theories  of  the  ether,  that  lately  propounded 
by  Professor  Osborne  Reynolds  is  perhaps  the  most  15 
startling.  It  inverts  all  our  previous  ideas  on  the  subject. 
According  to  this,  the  youngest  theory  of  the  ether,  we 
must  look  upon  the  ether  as  the  one  really  substantial 
thing  in  the  universe,  its  density  being  ten  thousand  times 
greater  than  that  of  water;  while  matter,  which  seems  so  20 
substantial,  consists,  so  to  speak,  in  an  absence  of  mass, 
and  has  the  character  of  a  mere  wave  in  the  ether.  On 
this  newest  theory  "we  are  all  waves,"  as  the  author  of 
the  theory,  bursting  into  poetry,  exclaimed  at  the  close 
of  the  eighth  section  of  his  Rede  lecture.  This  astonishing  25 
proposition,  which  has  cost  its  author  no  less  than  twenty 
years  of  labor,  asks  us  to  imagine  that  the  universe,  except 
those  minor  portions  which  •  constitute  matter,  is  built 
up,  like  a  bag  of  sand,  of  grains  of  definite  shape  and  in 
size  so  inconceivably  small  that  their  diameters  are  no  80 
greater  than  the  seven  hundred  thousand  millionth  part 
of  the  wave-length  of  violet  light,  which  in  its  turn  amounts 
to  only  sixteen  millionths  of  an  inch,  and  so  closely  packed 
that,  though  not  absolutely  immovable,  the  four  hundred 


EXPOSITION  43 

thousand  millionth  of  the  seven  hundred  thousand  millionth 
of  one  sixty  thousandth  part  of  an  inch — i.  e.,  the  four 
hundred  thousand  millionth  part  of  their  own  diameter — 
would  represent  approximately  the  free  path  through  which 

5  these  particles  are  free  to  move.  Professor  Reynolds  tells 
us  that  the  density  of  this  medium,  far  from  being  almost 
indefinitely  small,  is  nearly  five  hundred  times  as  great 
as  that  of  the  densest  matter  known  to  us  on  earth,  and  its 
pressure  more  than  three  thousand  times  greater  than  that 

10  which  any  material  yet  tried  has  been  known  to  sustain. 

To  get  some  idea  of  this  conception  of  ether,  picture  to 

yourself  a  billiard  table  carefully  packed  from  one  end  to 

the  other  with  line  after  line  of  billiard  balls,  each  line  so 

nicely  fitted  or  geared  into  the  next  that  the  balls  are 

15  packed  almost  as  close  to  each  other  as  is  possible,  yet 
not  so  very  tightly  as  to  prevent,  absolutely,  all  motion 
among  them.  Imagine,  again,  that  you  have  not  one 
layer  of  balls,  as  on  a  billiard  table,  confined  by  the  sides 
of  the  table,  but  layer  upon  layer  piled  one  above  the  other 

20  and  extending  absolutely  without  limit  in  every  direction. 
Remember  that  these  balls  or  grains  are  so  minute  that, 
say,  11,200,000,000,000,000,000  of  them  laid  side  by  side 
along  a  line  would  only  occupy  a  single  inch,  and  you  will 
have  a  picture,  so  far  as  may  be,  of  Professor  Reynolds* 

25  conception  of  the  universal  medium,  the  ether. 

Now,  it  is  a  peculiar  fact,  which  can  be  illustrated 
practically  by  means  of  some  small  shot  in  an  india- 
rubber  bag,  that  such  a  system  of  particles  as  that  which  I 
have  just  described  does  not  contract  when  submitted  to 

30  pressure,  but,  on  the  contrary,  undergoes  expansion,  and 
for  the  following  reason.  When  a  system  of  hard  grains 
arranged  in  "normal  piling,"  as  Professor  Reynolds  calls 
the  state  of  affairs  described  above,  is  disturbed  by  pressure, 
the  particles  must  of  necessity  move  not  toward  one  another 


44  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

if  they  move  at  all,  but,  on  the  contrary,  away  from  one 
another,  since  to  begin  with  they  are  packed  as  close  to- 
gether, practically  speaking,  as  they  can  be.  When  such 
a  system  is  submitted  to  a  strain  the  gearing  of  the  particles 
is  affected,  layers  of  particles  being  thrown  out  of  gearing  5 
here  and  there,  whereby  certain  "singular  surfaces"  or 
lines  of  misfit  are  formed  in  the  system.*  These  lines  of 
misfit  can  be  propagated  in  any  direction,  and  being  so 
propagated  they  constitute,  on  this  hypothesis,  matter 
in  motion.  Thus,  as  I  said  before,  according  to  this  10 
astonishing  conception,  the  ether  alone  has  any  concrete 
existence  in  the  universe,  and  matter  consists  of  mere  waves 
or  eddies  passing  through  it.  We  have  all  watched  the 
golden  ears  of  corn  waving  in  the  wind  on  summer  days. 
With  this  remembrance  to  help,  you  may  perhaps  be  able  15 
to  picture  broadly  such  a  state  of  things  as  that  which  I 
have  endeavored  to  depict.  Imagine  undulations  due  to 
the  translation  of  "lines  of  misfit,"  moving  eternally  in 
every  direction  through  a  universe  full  of  closely  packed 
particles.  Then  these  waves,  due  to  the  propagation  .of  20 
singular  surfaces,  constitute  matter,  on  Professor  Osborne 
Reynolds'  hypothesis.  In  them  he  sees  the  molecules 
of  the  chemist,  and  by  means  of  his  theory  he  claims  to 
account  for  such  phenomena  as  electricity,  gravitation, 
and  the  propagation  of  light.  In  thinking  of  matter  from  i5 
this  point  of  view  we  must  not  forget  that  motion  is  as 
real  as  matter;  that  the  waves  which  play  over  the  corn 
are  not  less  real  than  the  corn  itself,  otherwise  we  may 
do  the  theory  and  its  distinguished  author  less  than  justice. 

We  owe  the  last  new  theory  of  the  ether,  which  space  30 
permits  us  to  dwell  upon,  to  Dr.  I-.armor,  of  the  University 

*To  see  what  is  meant  by  a  line  of  misfit  yo"  mj^y  make  an  exper- 
iment with  some  marbles  m  a  plate,  first  ^earin^  them  together  all 
through  the  mass  and  then  throwing  two  lines  out  of  gearing  by  press- 
ing a  strip  of  cardboard  or  thin  sheet-metal  between  them. 


EXPOSITION  45 

of  Cambridge.  This  has  but  little  in  common  with  the 
hypothesis  we  have  just  considered,  except  that  Dr. 
Larmor,  like  his  colleague,  seems  to  regard  the  ether  as 
the  concrete  reality,  and  asks  us  to  look  upon  matter  as 
5  so  comparatively  intangible  and  unsubstantial  in  character 
that  a  friendly  critic,  after  perusing  his  recent  book  on 
Mther  and  Matter,  remarked  that  he  presumed  its  title 
was  the  result  of  a  typographical  error,  and  must  have 
been  written  originally  ^ther  and  no  Matter.     Dr.  Larmor 

10  is  a  leader  in  that  distinguished  school  of  physicists  which 
is  disposed  to  consider  it  likely  that  the  chemical  atoms 
are  built  up  "  of  positive  and  negative  electrons  interleaved 
or  interlocked  in  a  state  of  violent  motion  so  as  to  produce  a 
stable  configuration  under  the  influence  of  their  centrifugal 

15  inertia  and  their  electric  forces."  Hence  the  electric 
theory  of  matter,  as  might  have  been  expected,  plays  a 
leading  part  in  this  attempt  to  penetrate  the  secret  of  the 
structure  of  the  ether. 

A  few  years  ago  Lord  Kelvin  charmed  and  delighted  the 

20  world  with  a  conception  of  matter  which  pictured  it  as 
consisting  of  "vortex  rings  "  formed  in  a  perfectly  friction- 
less  fluid — the  ether. 

It  is  rather  difficult  at  first  to  imagine  conditions  under 
which   flexible   chains   or   india-rubber  tubes   filled   with 

25  water  could  become  rigid,  without  the  links  of  the  chain 
being  bolted  together  or  the  water  frozen ;  and  yet  there  are  , 
circumstances  under  which  this  occurs.     For  example,  if 
you  join  the  two  ends  of  a  common  watch-chain,  and  then 
by  means  of  pulleys  set  the  chain  rotating  rapidly,  it  will 

30  become  stiff,  and  presently  if  the  rate  of  rotation  be  raised 
suflficiently,  will  be  found  to  retain  its  rigidity  so  completely 
when  the  pulleys  are  withdrawn  that  it  might  easily  be 
mistaken  for  a  ring  of  solid  metal.  And,  again,  although 
a  circular  india-rubber  tube  filled  with  water  is  limp  and 


46  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

flexible,  the  same  tube  becomes  so  stiff  when  its  liquid  con- 
tents are  made  to  rotate  vigorously  that  it  will  stand  upright. 
The  following  experiment  illustrates  the  point  still  better. 
Get  a  wooden  box  having  sides  about  twenty-four 
inches  square — a  common  sugar  box  will  do — replace  5 
its  lid  loosely  by  a  piece  of  cotton  cloth  fixed  securely 
round  the  edges.  Cut  a  sharp-edged  circular  hole  four 
or  five  inches  in  diameter  in  the  center  of  that  side  of  the 
box  which  faces  the  cloth.  Place  inside  the  box  a  small 
dish  containing  some  very  strong  solution  of  ammonia,  10 
together  with  a  second  dish  containing  either  some  very 
strong  spirits  of  salts,  gently  warmed,  or  a  mixture  of  oil 
of  vitriol  and  common  salt,  and  let  them  stand  till  the  box 
is  filled  with  a  fine  white  smoke  of  ammonium  chloride. 
Then  place  this  apparatus  at  one  end  of  a  large  room,  15 
and  convey  a  series  of  sharp  impulses  to  the  air  within  the 
box  by  withdrawing  the  cloth  covering  and  suddenly 
pushing  it  back  into  the  box.  When  you  do  this,  a  magnifi- 
cent smoke  ring  will  sail  across  the  room  after  each  opera- 
tion. These  rings  consist  for  the  most  part  of  air,  but  are  20 
made  visible  by  the  opaque  particles  of  ammonium 
chloride  mingled  with  the  latter.  They  will  blow  out  a 
candle  placed  several  feet  away  from  their  point  of  origin, 
and  probably  will  retain  their  form  until  they  impinge  on 
some  solid  object,  such  as  the  wall  of  the  room.  In  short,  25 
these  rings  of  rotating  air  possess  some  considerable 
degree  of  rigidity.  They  will  even  bear  blows,  in  modera- 
tion, as  you  may  prove  by  sending  one  such  ring  quickly 
after  another  which  is  traveling  at  a  slower  rate,  when  you 
will  see  that  as  they  approach,  and  still  more  when  they  30 
come  into  contact,  each  visibly  affects  the  other  much  as 
two  solid  objects  might  do.  I^ook  at  some  of  these  smoke- 
rings  closely,  and  you  will  soon  be  satisfied  that  the  air 
composing  them  is  in  circular  motion — that  the  rings  are 


EXPOSITION  47 

built  up,  as  it  were,  of  a  number  of  "vortex  stream  lines" 
more  or  less  resembling  the  rotating  chain  described  above. 
The  rigidity  of  a  rotating  chain  rapidly  diminishes  and 
soon  disappears  if  we  stop  the  machine  which  drives  it, 
5  and,  similarly,  though  a  smoke  ring  may  travel  a  good 
many  feet  in  still  air,  yet  after  a  while  it  gradually  falls  to 
pieces  before  our  eyes.  This  is  due  to  friction  among  the 
rotating  parts  of  the  system.  The  energy  of  the  system 
is  gradually  frittered  away  as  heat,  the  motion  diminishes, 

10  the  rings  gradually  lose  their  rigidity,  and  presently  their 
component  particles  are  once  more  indistinguishable  from 
those  of  the  surrounding  air.  But  imagine  vortex  rings 
set  up  in  a  perfect  frictionless  fluid.  Would  not  these  be 
eternal  ?     Or  suppose  the  fluid  to  be  only  a  very  near 

15  approximation  to  a  frictionless  fluid.  Then  would  they 
not,  at  any  rate,  seem  eternal  ?  In  short,  does  it  not 
appear  conceivable  that  the  atoms  of  the  chemist  may  be 
vortex  rings  formed  in  the  ether  ?  This  was  Lord  Kelvin's 
theory,  of  which  it  has  been  said  that  it  is  so  beautiful 

20  that  whether  it  be  true  or  whether  it  be  untrue,  at  least 
it  deserves  to  be  true.  On  this  view,  the  atoms  of  the 
chemist,  atoms  of  radium,  atoms  of  oxygen,  atoms  of  argon, 
helium,  and  all  the  rest  of  the  elements  are  not  detached 
particles  of  alien  matter  bedded  in  the  ether,  like  plums 

25  in  a  pudding,  but  differentiated  portions  of  the  ether  itself. 

Lord    Kelvin's   theory   accounts   for   much.     With   its 

aid  we  begin  to  understand,  or  to  feel  we  understand,  the 

indestructibility  of  atoms  and  their  capacity  for  definite 

•  vibrations  which  is  revealed  to  us  by  the  spectroscope. 

30  Further,  this  theory  gratifies  in  a  striking  manner  the  strong 
sentiment  in  favor  of  a  simple  universe,  which  has  been  the 
source  of  so  many  attempts  to  unify  our  conceptions  of 
the  physical  basis  of  the  latter.  But  it  fails  to  include  an 
electric  charge  as  part  of  the  constitution  of  the  sub-atoms 


48  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

of  matter,  and  thus  on  this  ground,  apart  from  other 
difficulties,*  fails  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  at  least  one 
great  school  of  physicists. 

A  satisfactory  theory  of  the  ether,  as  Dr.  Larmor  has 
pointed  out,  must  account  for  the  conveyance  of  electric  5 
attraction  across  the  ether  by  elastic  action,  and  an  electric 
field  must  be  a  field  of  strain.     Hence  each  sub-atom, 
with  its  permanent  electric  charge,  must  be  surrounded  by 
a  field  of  permanent  strain  in  the  ether.     This  condition 
requires  us  to  reject  hypotheses  based  upon  the  conception   10 
of  a  perfectly  fluid  ether,  and  forces  us  to  regard  the  ether 
as  endowed  with  some  quality  of  the  nature  of  elasticity. 
"A    protion,"    or    sub-atom    of    matter,    therefore.    Dr. 
Larmor  tells  us,  "must  be  in  whole  or  in  part  a  nucleus  of 
intrinsic  strain  in  the  ether,  a  place  at  which  the  continuity  15 
of  the  medium  has  been  broken  and  cemented  together 
again   (to  use  a  crude  but  effective  image)   without  ac- 
curately fitting  the  parts,  so  that  there  is  a  residual  strain 
all  round  the  place."     The  ultimate  element  of  material 
constitution  becomes,  on  this  view,  an  electric  charge  or  20 
nucleus  of  permanent  strain  in  the  ether  instead  of  a  vortex 
ring  generated  out  of  a  perfect  fluid,  as  in  the  hypothesis  last 
discussed,  and  we  may  venture  to  look  upon  molecules  as 
composed  of  systems  of  electrically  positive  and  negative 
protions  in  a  state  of  steady  orbital  motion  round  about  25 
each  other.     In  short,  as  Dr.  Larmor  says  in  JEtlier  and 
Matter,  it  seems  as  if  the  master  key  to  a  complete  unravel- 
ing of  the  general  dynamical  and  physical  relations  of 
matter  may  lie  in  the  fact  that  it  is  constituted  of  discrete 
molecules  "  involving  in  their  constitutions  orbital  systems  3( 
of   electrons,   and   moving   through   practically   stagnant 
ether."     I  am  afraid  this  will  hardly  make  the  matter 

*E.  g.,  vorlox  rin^s  at  a  moderate  distance  from  each  other  will 
not  exhil)it  in  tlieir  l)ehavior  to  one  another  anything  of  the  nature  of 
gravitation. 


EXPOSITION  49 

clear  to  all;  still,  perhaps  most  of  us  will  gather  in  a  general 
way  that,  according  to  this  view,  the  ether  is  not  a  perfectly 
frictionless  fluid,  but,  on  the  contrary,  is  endowed  with  an 
elastic  quality;  that,  somehow,  electrons,  which  are  minute 
5  charged  particles  of  matter  carrying  electricity  or  perhaps 
particles  of  electricity  alone,  are  generated  in  this  ether, 
and  that  systems  consisting  of  electrons  revolving  round 
about  one  another — may  we  say  more  or  less  like  the 
systems    of   the   heavens  ? — form   the   atoms    and    mole- 

10  cules  of  which  the  familiar  forms  of  matter  are  built  up. 
And  this  must  suffice,  as  it  would  be  impossible  in  a  short 
article  to  develop  Dr.  Larmor's  argument  fully,  or  to  give 
even  a  sketch  of  the  specification  of  an  ideal  medium  by 
which  he  illustrates  his  conception  of  the  ether  as   "a 

15  perfect  fluid  endowed  with  the  rotational  elasticity  de- 
manded by  its  more  obvious  properties." 

Here,  then,  we  have  the  outlines  of  three  pictures  of 
the  eternal  ether,  each  presenting  it  as  it  shapes  itself  in 
the  mind   of  a  great  contemporary  thinker.     To  Men- 

20  deleeff,  the  chemist,  it  appears  to  be  the  lightest  of  gases, 
the  most  inactive  of  all  the  elements.  Professor  Osborne 
Reynolds,  the  engineer,  pictures  it  as  a  mass  of  dense, 
closely  packed  grains;  Dr.  Larmor  as  a  rotationally  elastic 
fluid.     In  Professor  Mendeleeff's  eyes  the  ether  seems  but 

25  a  finer  kind  of  matter.  In  those  of  his  colleagues  it  is  the 
one  concrete  reality;  while  matter,  according  to  Professor 
Reynolds,  consists  merely  of  waves,  and,  according  to 
Dr.  Larmor,  of  systems  of  electrons,  or  nuclei  of  permanent 
etherial  strains,  in  rapid  motion. 

30  How  are  we  to  reconcile  these  diverse  presentments  of 
the  ether.?  Perhaps  the  best  answer  I  can  offer  is  to  re- 
mind you  that  throughout  the  history  of  science  truth  has 
ever  been  the  offspring  of  diversity  rather  than  of  uni- 
formity.    Three    men     describing    a    neighbor's    house 


50  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

might  very  well  give  discordant  and  yet  not  untrue  accounts 
of  it,  according  as  their  own  windows  looked  upon  its 
front,  its  back,  or  one  of  its  sides.  It  may  be — I  do  not 
venture  to  say  it  is — that  each  of  these  seemingly  diverse 
theories  of  the  ether  expresses  something  that  is  true  5 
about  that  aspect  of  the  subject  which  chiefly  has  pre- 
sented itself  to  its  author. 

Suggestions  :  This  is  a  good  example  of  "  popular  "  exposition 
of  a  scientific  question  very  recent  in  its  interest.  Observe  how 
carefully  the  author  starts,  passing  from  point  to  point,  each 
based  on  what  has  preceded  it.  Into  what  divisions  does  the 
exposition  fall.?  How  is  the  subject  matter  proportioned? — 
i.  e.,  what  portions  are  emphasized  and  why?  For  what  sort  of 
audience  is  the  exposition  intended  ?  Just  how  clear  to  you  is  the 
explanation  of  Mendeleeff's  "periodic  law?"  Note  the  clear 
and  relatively  simple  vocabulary  of  the  expositor.  Observe 
the  illuminating  summary  with  which  the  exposition  closes. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

(1)  Throw  into  clear  and  connected  literary  form,  with  famil- 
iar analogies  and  illustrations,  some  scientific  explanation 
that  you  have  heard  in  class  recently. 

(2)  Explain,  for  a  younger  person,  any  of  the  following  con- 
ceptions: the  theory  of  the  tides;  why  we  see  only  one  side  of 
the  moon;  the  nebular  hypothesis;  liquefaction  of  air;  the  un- 
dulatory  theory  of  light;  the  theory  of  cyclonic  storms;  the 
theory  of  the  ice  machine;  electric  traction;  the  vortex  theory 
of  matter;  the  X-ray;  radium. 


MEMORY* 
William  James 

MEMORY  proper,  or  secondary  memory  as  it  might 
be  styled,  is  the  knowledge  of  a  former  state  of 
mind  after  it  has  already  once  dropped  from  consciousness;  u 
*A  Briefer  Course  in  Psychology.    Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  pp.  287-88. 


EXPOSITION  51 

or  rather  it  is  the  knoivledge  of  an  event,  or  fact,  of  which 
meantime  we  have  not  been  thinking,  with  the  additional 
consciousness  that  we  have  thought  or  experienced  it 
before. 
5  The  first  element  which  such  a  knowledgre  involves 
would  seem  to  be  the  revival  in  the  mind  of  an  image  or 
copy  of  the  original  event.  And  it  is  an  assumption  made 
by  many  writers  that  such  revival  of  an  image  is  all  that 
is  needed  to  constitute  the  memory  of  the  original  oc- 

10  currence.  But  such  a  revival  is  obviously  not  a  memory, 
whatever  else  it  may  be;  it  ijs  simply  a  duplicate,  a  second 
event,  having  absolutely  no  connection  with  the  first  event 
except  that  it  happens  to  resemble  it.  The  clock  strikes 
to-day;  it  struck  yesterday;  and  may  strike  a  million  times 

15  ere  it  wears  out.  The  rain  pours  through  the  gutter  this 
week;  it  did  so  last  week; and  will  do  so  in  soecula sceculorum. 
But  does  the  present  clock-stroke  become  aware  of  the 
the  past  ones,  or  the  present  stream  recollect  the  past 
stream  because  they  repeat  and  resemble  them  ?     Assured- 

20  ly  not.  And  let  it  not  be  said  that  this  is  because  clock- 
strokes  and  gutters  are  physical  and  not  psychical  objects ; 
for  psychical  objects  (sensations,  for  example,)  simply 
recurring  in  successive  editions  will  remember  each  other 
on    that    account    no    more    than    clock-strokes    do.     No 

25  memory  is  involved  in  the  mere  fact  of  recurrence.  The 
successive  editions  of  a  feeling  are  so  many  inde- 
pendent events,  each  snug  in  its  own  skin.  Yester- 
day's feeling  is  dead  and  buried;  and  the  presence 
of  to-day's  is  no  reason  why  it  should  resuscitate  along 

30  with  to-day's.  A  farther  condition  is  required  before 
the  present  image  can  be  held  to  stand  for  a  past  origi- 
nal. 

That  condition   is  that  the  fact  imaged   be  expressly 
referred  to  the  past,  thought  as  in  the  past.     But  how  can 


52  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

we  think  a  thing  as  in  the  past,  except  by  thinking  of  the 
past  together  with  the  thing,  and  of  the  relation  of  the  two  ? 
And  how  can  we  think  of  the  past?  In  the  chapter  on 
Time-perception  we  have  seen  that  our  intuitive  or  im- 
mediate consciousness  of  pastness  hardly  carries  us  more  5 
than  a  few  seconds  backward  of  the  present  instant  of 
time.  Remote  dates  are  conceived,  not  perceived;  known 
symbolically  by  names,  such  as  "last  week,"  "1850;" 
or  thought  of  by  events  which  happened  in  them,  as  the 
year  in  which  we  attended  such  a  school,  or  met  with  such  10 
a  loss.  So  that  if  we  wish  to  think  of  a  particular  past 
epoch,  we  must  think  of  a  name  or  other  symbol,  or  else 
of  certain  concrete  events,  associated  therewithal.  Both 
must  be  thought  of,  to  think  the  past  epoch  adequately. 
And  to  "refer"  any  special  fact  to  the  past  epoch  is  to  15 
think  that  fact  with  the  names  and  events  which  character- 
ize its  date;  to  think  it,  in  short,  with  a  lot  of  contiguous 
associates. 

But  even  this  would  not  be  memory.  Memory  requires 
more  than  mere  dating  of  a  fact  in  the  past.  It  ^o 
must  be  dated  in  my  past.  In  other  words,  I  must 
think  that  I  directly  experienced  its  occurrence.  It 
must  have  that  "warmth  and  intimacy"  which  were  so 
often  spoken  of  in  the  chapter  on  the  Self,  as  characteriz- 
ing all  experiences  "appropriated"  by  the  thinker  as  his  25 
own. 

A  general  feeling  of  the  past  direction  in  time,  then,  a 
particular  date  conceived  as  lying  along  that  direction, 
and  defined  by  its  name  or  phenomenal  contents,  an  event 
imagined  as  located  therein,  and  owned  as  part  of  my  80 
experience, — such  are  the  elements  of  every  object  of 
memory. 


EXPOSITION  53 

LABOUR* 

William  Stanley  Jevons 

IT  is  easy  to  meet  with  definitions  or  at  least  descriptions 
of  the  term  labour,  especially  among  non-British 
economists.  We  need  hardly  notice  the  definition  of 
Cicero,  who  says,  ^^  Labor  est  functio  qucedam  vel  animi 
5  vel  corporis. "  If  we  are  thus  to  make  labour  include  all 
action  of  mind  or  body,  it  includes  all  life.  .  .  .  Malthus 
expressly  defines  labour  as  follows:  "The  exertions  of 
human  beings  employed  with  a  view  to  remuneration. 
If  the  term  be  applied  to  other  exertions,  they  must  be 

10  particularly  specified."  In  this  proposition,  however, 
the  word  remuneration  is  very  uncertain  in  meaning. 
Does  it  mean  only  wages  paid  by  other  persons  than  the 
labourer,  or  does  it  include  the  benefit  which  a  labourer 
may  gain  directly  from  his  own  labour  ? 

15  It  is  plain  that  labour  must  consist  of  some  energy  or 
action  of  the  body  or  mind,  but  it  does  not  follow  that 
every  kind  of  exertion  is  to  be  treated  in  economics.  Lay 
has  restricted  the  term  by  the  following  concise  definition : 
*'  Travail;  action  suivie,  dirigee  vers  un  but. "     The  action 

20  here  contemplated  excludes  mere  play  and  sport,  which 
carries  its  whole  purpose  with  it.  There  must  be  some 
extrinsic  benefit  to  be  purchased  by  the  action,  which 
moreover  must  be  continued,  consistent  action,  directed 
steadily  to  the  same  end.     This  correctly  describes  the 

25  great  mass  of  economic  labour  which  is  directed  simply 
to  the  earning  of  wages  and  the  producing  of  the  com- 
modities which  eventually  constitute  wages.  But  there 
is  nothing  in  this  definition  to  exclude  the  long-continued 
*The  Principles  of  Economics.      Macmillan   &  Co.,  1905.  pp.  72-76. 


54  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

exertions  of  a  boat's  crew  training  for  a  race,  the  steady 
practice  of  a  company  of  cricketers,  or  even  the  regular 
constitutional  walk  of  the  student  who  values  his  good 
health.  Moreover,  no  considerable  continuity  of  labour 
is  requisite  to  bring  it  under  economic  laws.  A  poor  man 
who  gathers  groundsell  in  the  morning  and  sells  it  about 
the  streets  the  same  afternoon  may  complete  the  circle 
of  economic  action  within  twenty-four  hours. 


Senior  has  given  a  definition  of  the  term  in  question, 
saying,  "Labour  is  the  voluntary  exertion  of  bodily  or  10 
mental  faculties  for  the  purpose  of  production."  Here 
the  term  production  is  made  the  scapegoat.  Does  produc- 
tion include  the  production  of  pleasure  or  prevention  of 
pain  in  every  way?  Does  it  include  the  training  of  the 
cricketer.?  The  word  "voluntary,"  again,  excludes  the  15 
forced  labour  of  slaves  and  prisoners,  not  to  speak  of 
draught  animals.  Yet  many  economic  questions  arise 
about  the  productiveness  of  the  exertions  of  such  agents. .  .  . 

Some  later  economists  consider  pain  or  disagreeableness 
to  be  a  necessary  characteristic  of  labour,  and  probably  20 
with  correctness.     Thus  Mill  defines  labour  as  "muscular 
or  nervous  action,  including  all  feehngs  of  a  disagreeable 
kind,    all    bodily    inconvenience    or    mental    annoyance 
connected   with   the   employment   of   one's   thoughts   or 
muscles,  or  both,  in  a  particular  occupation."     He  seems  25 
to   intend   that  only  what   is   disagreeable,   inconvenient 
or  annoying,   shall   be   included.     Professor   Hearn   also 
says  that  such  effort  as  the  term  labour  seems  to  imply 
is  "more  or  less  troublesome."     It  may  be  added   that   in 
all    the    dictionaries    pain    seems    to    be    regarded   as   a  30 
necessary  constituent  of  labour. 


EXPOSITION  55 

Nevertheless  it  cannot  possibly  be  said  that  all  economic 
labour  is  simple  pain.  Beyond  doubt  a  workman  in  good 
health  and  spirits,  and  fresh  from  a  good  night's  rest 
actually  enjoys  the  customary  exertion  of  his  morning  task. 
5  To  a  man  brought  up  in  the  steady  round  of  daily  trade 
and  labour,  inactivity  soon  becomes  tedious.  Happiness 
has  been  defined  as  the  reflex  of  unimpeded  energy, 
and  whatever  exactly  this  may  mean,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  any  ccftisiderable  degree  of  pleasure  can  be 

10  attained  only  by  setting  up  some  end  to  be  worked  for 
and  then  working.  The  real  solution  of  the  difficulty 
seems  to  be  this — that,  however  agreeable  labour  may  be 
when  the  muscles  are  recruited  and  the  nerves  unstrained, 
the  hedonic  condition  is  always  changed  as  the  labour 

l'^  proceeds.  As  we  shall  see,  continued  labour  grows  more 
and  more  painful,  and  when  long-continued  becomes 
almost  intolerable.  However  pleasurable  the  beginning, 
the  pleasure  merges  into  pain.  Now  when  we  are  engaged 
in   mere   sport,    devoid   of   any   conscious   perception   of 

20  future  good  or  evil,  exertion  will  not  continue  beyond  the 
point  when  present  pain  and  pleasure  are  balanced.  No 
motive  can  exist  for  further  action.  But  when  we  have 
any  future  utility  in  view  the  case  is  different.  The  mind 
of    the    labourer    balances   present   pain    against   future 

25  good,  so  that  the  labour  before  it  is  terminated  becomes 
purely  painful.  Now  the  problems  and  theorems  of 
economics  always  turn  upon  the  point  where  equality 
or  equilibrium  is  attained ;  when  labour  is  itself  pleasurable 
no  questions  can  arise  about  its  continuance.     There  is 

30  the  double  gain — the  pleasure  of  the  labour  itself  and  the 
pleasure  of  gaining  its  produce.  No  complicated  calculus 
is  needed  where  all  is  happy  and  certain.  It  is  on  this 
ground  that  we  may  probably  dismiss  from  economic 
science  all  sports  and  other  exertions  to  which  may  be 


56  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

applied  the  maxim — leave  off  as  soon  as  you  feel  in- 
clined. But  it  is  far  otherwise  with  that  advanced  point 
of  economic  labour  when  the  question  arises  whether  more 
labour  will  be  repaid  by  the  probability  of  future  good. 

I  am  by  no  means  sure  that  it  is  possible  to  embody  5 
in  a  single  definition  the  view  here  put  forward.  If  obliged 
to  attempt  a  definition,  I  should  say  that  labour  includes 
all  exertion  of  body  ^^^  mind  eventually  becoming  painful 
if  prolonged,  and  not  wholly  undertaken  for  the  sake 
of  immediate  pleasure.  This  proposition  plainly  includes  10 
all  painful  exertion  which  we  undergo  in  order  to  gain 
future  pleasures  or  to  ward  off  pains,  in  such  a  way  as  to 
leave  a  probable  hedonic  balance  in  our  favor;  but  it  does 
not  exclude  exertion  which,  even  at  the  time  of  exertion, 
is  producing  such  a  balance.  15 


AMERICANISM  -AN  ATTEMPT  AT  A 
DEFINITION* 

Brander  Matthews 

I^^HERE  are  many  words  in  circulation  among  us  which 
-  we  understand  fairly  well,  which  we  use  ourselves,  and 
which  we  should,  however,  find  it  difficult  to  define.  I 
think  that  Americanism  is  one  of  these  words;  and  I  think 
also  it  is  well  for  us  to  inquire  into  the  exact  meaning  of  'iO 
this  word,  which  is  often  most  carelessly  employed.  More 
than  once  of  late  we  have  heard  a  public  man  praised  for 
his  "aggressive  Americanism,"  and  occasionally  we  have 
seen  a  man  of  letters  denounced  for  his  'Mack  of  American- 

♦Reprinted  by  permission  of  the  author  from  Parts  of  Speech: 
Essays  on  English,  (^opyright,  1901,  by  Brander  Matthews.  New 
York:  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  1901. 


EXPOSITION  57 

ism."     Now  what  does  the  word  really  mean  when  it 
is  thus  used? 

It  means,  first  of  all,  a  love  for  this  country  of  ours,  an 
appreciation  of  the  institutions  of  this  nation,  a  pride  in 
5  the  history  of  this  people  to  which  we  belong.  And  to 
this  extent  Americanism  is  simply  another  word  for 
patriotism.  But  it  means,  also,  I  think,  more  than  this: 
it  means  a  frank  acceptance  of  the  principles  which  underlie 
our  government  here  in   the  United   States.     It  means, 

10  therefore,  a  faith  in  our  fellowman,  a  belief  in  liberty  and 
in  equality.  It  implies,  further,  so  it  seems  to  me,  a 
confidence  in  the  future  of  this  country,  a  confidence  in  its 
destiny,  a  buoyant  hopefulness  that  the  right  will  surely 
prevail. 

15  In  so  far  as  Americanism  is  merely  patriotism,  it  is  a 
very  good  thing.  The  man  who  does  not  think  his  own 
country  the  finest  in  the  world  is  either  a  pretty  poor  sort 
of  a  man  or  else  he  has  a  pretty  poor  sort  of  a  country.  If 
any  people  have  not  patriotism  enough  to  make  them 

20  willing  to  die  that  the  nation  may  live,  then  that  people 
will  soon  be  pushed  aside  in  the  struggle  of  life,  and  that 
nation  will  be  trampled  upon  and  crushed;  probably  it 
will  be  conquered  and  absorbed  by  some  race  of  a  stronger 
fiber  and  of  a  sterner  stock.     Perhaps  it  is  difficult  to 

25  declare  precisely  which  is  the  more  pernicious  citizen  of  a 
republic  when  there  is  danger  of  war  with  another  nation — 
the  man  who  wants  to  fight,  right  or  wrong,  or  the  man  who 
does  not  want  to  fight,  right  or  wrong;  the  hot-headed 
fellow  who  would  plunge  the  country  into  a  deadly  struggle 

30  without  first  exhausting  every  possible  chance  to  obtain  an 
honorable  peace,  or  the  cold-blooded  person  who  would 
willingly  give  up  anything  and  everything,  including 
honor  itself,  sooner  than  risk  the  loss  of  money  which  every 
war  surely  entails.     "My  country,  right  or  wrong,"  is  a 


58  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

good  motto  only  when  we  add  to  it,  "and  if  she  is  in  the 
wrong,  I'll  help  to  put  her  in  the  right."  To  shrink 
absolutely  from  a  fight  where  honor  is  really  at  stake,  this 
is  the  act  of  a  coward.  To  rush  violently  into  a  quarrel 
when  war  can  be  avoided  without  the  sacrifice  of  things  5 
dearer  than  life,  this  is  the  act  of  a  fool. 

True  patriotism  is  quiet,   simple,   dignified;  it  is  not 
blatant,  verbose,  vociferous.     The  noisy  shriekers  who  go 
about  with  a  chip  on  their  shoulders  and  cry  aloud  for 
war  upon  the  slightest  provocation  belong  to  the  class   10 
contemptuously    known    as    "Jingoes."     They    may    be 
patriotic, — and  as  a  fact  they  often  are, — but  their  pa- 
triotism is  too  frothy,  too  hysteric,  too  unintelligent,  to 
inspire  confidence.     True  patriotism  is  not  swift  to  resent 
an  insult;  on  the  contrary, it  is  slow  to  take  offense, slow  to   15 
believe  that  an  insult  could  have  been  intended.     True 
patriotism,  believing  fully  in  the  honesty  of  its  own  acts, 
assumes  also  that  others  are  acting  with  the  same  honesty. 
True  patriotism,  having  a  solid  pride  in  the  power  and 
resources  of  our  country,  doubts  always  the  likelihood  of  any  20 
other  nation  being  willing  carelessly  to  arouse  our  enmity. 

In  so  far,  therefore,  as  Americanism  is  merely  patriotism 
it  is  a  very  good  thing,  as  I  have  tried  to  point  out.  But 
Americanism  is  something  more  than  patriotism.  It  calls 
not  only  for  love  of  our  common  country,  but  also  for  i5 
respect  for  our  fellow-man.  It  implies  an  actual  ac- 
ceptance of  equality  as  a  fact.  It  means  a  willingness 
always  to  act  on  the  theory,  not  that  "  I'm  as  good  as  the 
other  man,"  but  that  "the  other  man  is  as  good  as  I 
am."  It  means  leveling  up  rather  than  leveling  down.  It  30 
means  a  regard  for  law,  and  a  desire  to  gain  our  wishes 
and  to  advance  our  ideas  always  decently  and  in  order, 
and  with  deference  to  the  wishes  and  ideas  of  others.  It 
leads  a  man  always  to  acknowledge  the  good  faith  of  those 


EXPOSITION  59 

with  whom  he  is  contending,  whether  the  contest  is  one 
of  sport  or  of  poHtics.  It  prevents  a  man  from  de- 
claring, or  even  from  thinking,  that  all  the  right  is  on  his 
side,  and  that  all  the  honest  people  in  the  country  are 
5  necessarily  of  his  opinion. 

And,  further,  it  seems  to  me  that  true  Americanism  has 
faith  and  hope.  It  believes  that  the  world  is  getting 
better,  if  not  year  by  year,  at  least  century  by  century; 
and  it  believes  also  that  in  this  steady  improvement  of  the 

10  condition  of  mankind  these  United  States  are  destined  to  do 
their  full  share.  It  holds  that,  bad  as  many  things  may 
seem  to  be  to-day,  they  were  worse  yesterday,  and  they 
will  be  better  to-morrow.  However  dark  the  outlook 
for  any  given  cause  may  be  at  any  moment   the   man 

15  imbued  with  the  true  spirit  of  Americanism  never  abandons 
hope  and  never  relaxes  effort;  he  feels  sure  that  everything 
comes  to  him  who  waits.  He  knows  that  all  reforms  are 
inevitable  in  the  long  run;  and  that  if  they  do  not  finally 
establish  themselves  it  is  because  they  are  not  really  re- 

^0  forms,  though  for  a  time  they  may  have  seemed  to  be. 

And  a  knowledge  of  the  history  of  the  American  people 
will  supply  ample  reason  for  this  faith  in  the  future.  The 
sin  of  negro-slavery  never  seemed  to  be  more  secure  from 
overthrow  than  it  did  in  the  ten  years  before  it  was  finally 

25  abolished.  A  study  of  the  political  methods  of  the  past 
will  show  that  there  has  been  immense  improvement  in 
many  respects;  and  it  is  perhaps  in  our  political  methods 
that  we  Americans  are  most  open  to  censure.  That  there 
was  no  deterioration  of  the  moral  stamina  of  the  whole 

30  people  during  the  first  century  of  the  American  republic 
any  student  can  make  sure  of  by  comparing  the  spirit 
which  animated  the  inhabitants  of  the  thirteen  Colonies 
during  the  Revolution  with  the  spirit  which  animated 
the  population  of  the  Northern  States  (and  of  the  Southern 


60  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

no  less)  during  the  Civil  War.  We  are  accustomed  to  sing 
the  praises  of  our  grandfathers  who  won  our  independence, 
and  very  properly;  but  our  grandchildren  will  have  also 
to  sing  the  praises  of  our  fathers  who  stood  up  against  one 
another  for  four  years  of  the  hardest  fighting  the  world  5 
has  ever  seen,  bearing  the  burdens  of  a  protracted  struggle 
with  an  uncomplaining  cheerfulness  which  was  not  a 
characteristic  of  the  earlier  war. 

True  Americanism  is  sturdy  but  modest.     It  is  as  far 
removed  from  "Jingoism"  in  times  of  trouble  as  it  is  10 
from  "Spread-Eagleism"  in  times  of  peace.     It  is  neither 
vainglorious  nor  boastful.     It  knows  that  the  world  was 
not  created  in  1492,  and  that  July  4,  1776,  is  not  the  most 
important  date  in  the  whole  history  of  mankind.     It  does 
not  overestimate  the  contribution  which  America  has  made  15 
to  the  rest  of  the  world,  nor  does  it  underestimate  this 
contribution.     True  Americanism,  as  I  have  said,  has  a 
pride  in  the  past  of  this  great  country  of  ours,  and  a  faith 
in  the  future;  but  none  the  less  it  is  not  so  foolish  as  to 
think  that  all  is  perfection  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  20 
and  that  all  is  imperfection  on  the  other  side. 

It  knows  that  some  things  are  better  here  than  anywhere 
else  in  the  world,  that  some  things  are  no  better,  and  that 
some  things  are  not  so  good  in  America  as  they  are  in 
Europe.  For  example,  probably  the  institutions  of  the  25 
nation  fit  the  needs  of  the  population  with  less  friction 
here  in  the  United  States  than  in  any  other  country  in  the 
world.  But  probably,  also,  there  is  no  other  one  of  the 
great  nations  of  the  world  in  which  the  government  of  the 
large  cities  is  so  wasteful  and  so  negligent.  30 

True  Americanism  recognizes  the  fact  that  America 
is  the  heir  of  the  ages,  and  that  it  is  for  us  to  profit  as  best 
we  can  by  the  experience  of  Europe,  not  copying  servilely 
what  has  been  successful  in  the  old  world,  but  modifying 


EXPOSITION  61 

what  we  borrow  in  accord  with  our  own  needs  and  our 
own  conditions.  It  knows,  and  it  has  no  hesitation  in 
declaring,  that  we  must  always  be  the  judges  ourselves  as 
to  whether  or  not  we  shall  follow  the  example  of  Europe. 
5  Many  times  we  have  refused  to  walk  in  the  path  of  Euro- 
pean precedent,  preferring  very  properly  to  blaze  out  a 
track  for  ourselves.  More  often  than  not  this  independ- 
ence was  wise,  but  now  and  again  it  was  unwise. 

Finally,  one  more  quality  of  true  Americanism  must  be 

10  pointed  out.  It  is  not  sectional.  It  does  not  dislike  an 
idea,  a  man,  or  a  political  party  because  that  idea,  that 
man,  or  that  party  comes  from  a  certain  part  of  the  country. 
It  permits  a  man  to  have  a  healthy  pride  in  being  a  son 
of  Virginia,  a  citizen  of  New  York,  a  native  of  Massachu- 

15  setts,  but  only  on  condition  that  he  has  a  pride  still  stronger 
that  he  is  an  American,  a  citizen  of  the  United  States. 
True  Americanism  is  never  sectional.  It  knows  no  North 
and  no  South,  no  East  and  no  West.  And  as  it  has  no 
sectional  likes  and  dislikes,  so  it  has  no  international  likes 

20  and  dislikes.  It  never  puts  itself  in  the  attitude  of  the 
Englishman  who  said,  "I've  no  prejudices,  thank  Heaven, 
but  I  do  hate  a  Frenchman!'*  It  frowns  upon  all  appeals 
to  the  '  former  allegiance  of  naturalized  citizens  of  this 
country;  and  it  thinks  that  it  ought  to  be  enough  for  any 

25  man  to  be  an  American  without  the  aid  of  the  hyphen 
which  makes  him  a  British- American,  an  Irish- American, 
or  a  German-American. 

True  Americanism,  to  conclude,  feels  that  a  land  which 
bred  Washington  and  Franklin  in  the  last  century,  and 

30  Emerson  and  Lincoln  in  this  century,  and  which  opens  its 
schools  wide  to  give  every  boy  the  chance  to  model  himself 
on  these  great  men,  is  a  land  deserving  of  Lowell's  praise  as 
"a  good  country  to  live  in,  a  good  country  to  live  for,  and  a 
good  country  to  die  for. " 


62  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Suggestions:  Study  the  foregoing  definitions  with  the  great- 
est care,  and  look  in  the  dictionary  for  the  meaning  of  each  word 
that  you  do  not  know.  Consider  the  difference  between  such 
expository  definitions  as  "Memory,"  Labour,"  and  "Ameri- 
canism," and  the  ordinary  dictionary  definition. 

Do  you  notice  any  differences  in  logical  method  between 
"Memory"  and  "Labour.^"  Which  seems  to  you  the  more 
exact  and  convincing.? 

A  Harvard  student  once  wrote,  beside  the  last  paragraph 
of  the  definition  of  Memory,  "Why  didn't  you  say  so  in  the 
first  place?"  Does  this  comment  seem  to  you  justifiable, 
as  a  criticism  upon  the  method  of  Professor  James'  exposition  ? 

Observe  that  Professor  Matthews'  definition  of  "American- 
ism" is  not  analytical,  but  constructive:  he  is  fixing  and  giving 
point  to  a  term  that  has  hitherto  been  loosely  and  carelessly 
employed. 

Define  and  illustrate,  in  one  or  several  meanings,  any  one  of 
the  following  terms.* 

Religion.  Faith. 

College  Spirit.  Romance. 

Honor.  Citizenship. 

Heroism.  Eternity. 

Value.  Snobbishness. 

Society.  Peace. 

Charity.  Scholarship. 


WIT  AND  HUMOR  f 
E.  P.  Whipple 

WIT  was  originally  a  general  name  for  all  the  intel- 
lectual powers,  meaning  the  faculty  which  kens, 
perceives,  knows,  understands;  it  was  gradually  narrowed 
in  its  significance  to  express  merely  the  resemblance 
between  ideas;  and  lastly  to  note  that  resemblance  when 

♦This  list  may,  of  course,  be  indefinitely  extended. 
t  Prom   Literature  and  Life,    pp.  91-93.     Reprmted    by  permission 
of  Houghton  Mifflin  Company. 


EXPOSITION  63 

it  occasioned  ludicrous  surprise.  It  marries  ideas,  lying 
wide  apart,  by  a  sudden  jerk  of  the  understanding.  Humor 
originally  meant  moisture,  a  signification  it  metaphorically 
retains,  for  it  is  the  very  juice  of  the  mind,  oozing  from  the 
5  brain,  and  enriching  and  fertilizing  wherever  it  falls. 
Wit  exists  by  antipathy;  Humor  by  sympathy.  Wit 
laughs  at  things;  Humor  laughs  with  them.  Wit  lashes 
external  appearances,  or  cunningly  exaggerates  single 
foibles  into  character;  Humor  glides  into  the  heart  of  its 

10  object,  looks  lovingly  on  the  infirmities  it  detects,  and 
represents  the  whole  man.  Wit  is  abrupt,  darting,  scorn- 
ful, and  tosses  its  analogies  in  your  face;  Humor  is  slow 
and  shy,  insinuating  its  fun  into  your  heart.  Wit  is 
negative,  analytical,  destructive;  Humor  is  creative.     The 

15  couplets  of  Pope  are  witty,  but  Sancho  Panza  is  a  humorous 
creation.  Wit,  when  earnest,  has  the  earnestness  of 
passion,  seeking  to  destroy;  Humor  has  the  earnestness 
of  affection,  and  would  lift  up  what  is  seemingly  low  into 
our  charity  and  love.     Wit,  bright,  rapid,  and  blasting  as 

20  the  lightning,  flashes,  strikes,  and  vanishes,  in  an  instant; 
Humor,  warm  and  all-embracing  as  the  sunshine,  bathes 
its  objects  in  a  genial  and  abiding  light.  Wit  implies 
hatred  or  contempt  of  folly  and  crime,  produces  its  effects 
by  brisk  shocks  of  surprise,  uses  the  whip  of  scorpions, 

25  and  the  branding-iron,  stabs,  stings,  pinches,  tortures, 
goads,  teases,  corrodes,  undermines;  Humor  implies  a 
sure  conception  of  the  beautiful,  the  majestic,  and  the 
true,  by  whose  light  it  surveys  and  shapes  their  opposites. 
It  is  an  humane  influence,  softening  with  mirth  the  ragged 

30  inequalities  of  existence,  promoting  tolerant  views  of  life, 
bridging  over  the  spaces  which  separate  the  lofty  from  the 
lowly,  the  great  from  the  humble.  Old  Dr.  Fuller's 
remark,  that  a  negro  is  "the  image  of  God  cut  in  ebony," 
is  humorous;  Horace  Smith's  inversion  of  it,  that  the  task- 


64  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

master  is  *'the  image  of  the  devil  cut  in  ivory,"  is  witty. 
Wit  can  co-exist  with  fierce  and  maHgnant  passions;  but 
Humor  demands  good  feehng  and  fellow-feehng,  feehng 
not  merely  for  what  is  above  us,  but  for  what  is  around  and 
beneath  us.  When  Wit  and  Humor  are  commingled, 
the  result  is  a  genial  sharpness,  dealing  with  its  objects 
somewhat  as  old  Izaak  Walton  dealt  with  the  frog  he  used 
for  bait, — running  the  hook  neatly  through  his  mouth  and 
out  at  his  gills,  and  in  so  doing  "using  him  as  though  he 
loved  him!"  Sidney  Smith  and  Shakespeare's  Touchstone 
are  examples. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Genius  and  Talent.  Fame  and  Notoriety. 

Culture    and    Education.  Conventionality  and  Propriety. 

Fancy  and  Imagination.  Truth  and  Veracity. 

Learning  and  Knowledge.  Work  and  I^abor. 

Life   and    Existence.  Sentiment   and    Feeling. 


THE  NATION  AND  THE  STATES* 

James  Bryce 

A  FEW  years  ago  the  American  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church  was  occupied  at  its  annual  Convention  in 
revising  its  liturgy.  It  was  thought  desirable  to  introduce 
among  the  short  sentence  prayers  a  prayer  for  the  whole  15 
people;  and  an  eminent  New  England  divine  proposed 
the  words  *'0  Lord,  bless  our  nation."  Accepted  one 
afternoon  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  the  sentence  was 
brought  up  the  next  day  for  reconsideration,  when  so  many 
^American  Commonwealth,     v.  i,  pt.  1,  ch.  2,  pp.  16-22. 


EXPOSITION  65 

objections  were  raised  by  the  laity  to  the  word  "nation," 
as  importing  too  definite  recognition  of  national  unity, 
that  it  was  dropped,  and  instead  there  were  adopted  the 
words  "O  Lord,  bless  these  United  States." 
5  To  Europeans  who  are  struck  by  the  patriotism  and 
demonstrative  national  pride  of  their  transatlantic  visitors, 
this  fear  of  admitting  that  the  American  people  constitute 
a  nation  seems  extraordinary.  But  it  is  only  the  expression 
on  its  sentimental  side  of  the  most  striking  and  pervading 

10  characteristic  of  the  political  system  of  the  country,  the 
existence  of  a  double  government,  a  double  allegiance,  a 
double  patriotism.  America — I  call  it  America  (leaving 
out  of  sight  South  America,  Canada,  and  Mexico),  in 
order  to  avoid  using  at  this  stage  the  term  United  States — 

15  America  is  a  Commonwealth  of  commonwealths,  a  Re- 
public of  republics,  a  State  which,  while  one,  is  nevertheless 
composed  of  other  States  even  more  essential  to  its  existence 
than  it  is  to  theirs. 

This  is  a  point  of  so  much  consequence,  and  so  apt  to 

20  be  misapprehended  by  Europeans,  that  a  few  sentences 
may  be  given  to  it. 

When  within  a  large  political  community  smaller  com- 
munities are  found  existing,  the  relation  of  the  smaller 
to  the  larger  usually  appears  in  one  or  other  of  the  two 

25  following  forms.  One  form  is  that  of  a  league,  in  which 
a  number  of  political  bodies,  be  they  monarchies  or  re- 
publics, are  bound  together  so  as  to  constitute  for  certain 
purposes,  and  especially  for  the  purpose  of  common 
defence,  a  single  body.     The  members  of  such  a  composite 

30  body  or  league  are  not  individual  men  but  communities. 
It  exists  only  as  an  aggregate  of  communities,  and  will 
therefore  vanish  so  soon  as  the  communities  which  com- 
pose it  separate  themselves  from  one  another.  Moreover 
it  deals  with  and  acts  upon  these  communities  only.   With 


66  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

the  individual  citizen  it  has  nothing  to  do,  no  right  of  taxing 
him,  or  judging  him,  or  making  laws  for  him,  for  in  all 
these  matters  it  is  to  his  own  community  that  the  allegiance 
of  the  citizen  is  due.  A  familiar  instance  of  this  form  is 
to  be  found  in  the  Germanic  Confederation  as  it  existed  5 
from  1815  until  1866.  The  Hanseatic  League  in  medieval 
Germany,  the  Swiss  Confederation  down  till  the  present 
century,  are  other  examples. 

In  the  second  form,  the  smaller  communities  are  mere 
subdivisions  of  that  greater  one  which  we  call  the  Nation.   10 
They  have  been  created,  or  at  any  rate  they  exist,  for 
administrative  purposes  only.  Such  powers  as  they  pos- 
sess are  powers  delegated  by  the  nation,  and  can  be  over- 
ridden by  its  will.     The  nation  acts  directly  by  its  own 
officers,  not  merely  on  the  communities,  but  upon  every  15 
single  citizen;  and  the  nation,   because  it  is  independent 
of  these  communities,  would  continue  to  exist  were  they 
all  to  disappear.     Examples  of  such  minor  communities 
may  be  found  in  the  departments  of  modern  France  and 
the  counties  of  modern  England.     Some  of  the  English  'c3 
counties   were   at   one  time,  like  Kent  or  Dorset,  inde- 
pendent kingdoms  or  tribal  districts;  some,  like  Bedford- 
shire, were  artificial  divisions  from  the  first.     All  are  now 
merely  local  administrative  areas,  the  powers  of  whose 
local  autliorities  have  been  delegated  from  the  national   i5 
government  of  England.     The  national  government  does 
not  stand  by  virtue  of  them,  does  not  need  them.     They 
might  all   be  abolished  or  turned  into  wholly  diflFerent 
communities  without  seriously  affecting  its  structure. 

The  American  Federal  Republic  corresponds  to  neither  30 
of  these  two  forms,  but  may  be  said  to  stand  between  them. 
Its  central  or  national  government  is  not  a  mere  league, 
for  it  does  not  wholly  depend  on  the  component  com- 
munities which  we  call  the  States.     It  is  itself  a  common- 


EXPOSITION  61 

wealth  as  well  as  a  union  of  commonwealths,  because  it 
claims  directly  the  obedience  of  every  citizen,  and  acts 
immediately  upon  him  through  its  courts  and  executive 
officers.  Still  less  are  the  minor  communities,  the  States, 
5  mere  subdivisions  of  the  Union,  mere  creatures  of  the 
national  government,  like  the  counties  of  England  or 
the  departments  of  France.  They  have  over  their  citizens 
an  authority  which  is  their  own,  and  not  delegated  by  the 
central  government.     They  have  not  been  called  into  being 

10  by  that  government.  They  existed  before  it.  They 
could  exist  without  it. 

The  central  or  national  government  and  the  state 
governments  may  be  compared  to  a  large  building  and  a 
set  of  smaller  buildings  standing  on  the  same  ground,  yet 

15  distinct  from  each  other.  It  is  a  combination  sometimes 
seen  where  a  great  church  has  been  erected  over  more 
ancient  homes  of  worship.  First  the  soil  is  covered  by  a 
number  of  small  shrines  and  chapels,  built  at  different 
times  and  in  different  styles  of  architecture,  each  com- 

20  plete  in  itself.  Then  over  them  and  including  them  all 
in  its  spacious  fabric  there  is  reared  a  new  pile  with  its 
own  loftier  roof,  its  own  walls,  which  may  perhaps  rest 
on  and  incorporate  the  walls  of  the  older  shrines,  its  own 
internal    plan.*     The   identity   of   the   earlier   buildings 

25  has  however  not  been  obliterated;  and  if  the  later  and 
larger  structure  were  to  disappear,  a  little  repair  would 
enable  them  to  keep  out  the  wind  and  weather,  and  be 
again  what  they  once  were,  distinct  and  separate  edifices. 
So  the  American  States  are  now  all  inside  the  Union,  and 

80  have  all   become  subordinate  to  it.     Yet  the  Union   is 

more  than  an  aggregate  of  States,  and  the  States  are  more 

than  parts  of  the  Union.     It  mi^^ht  be  destroyed,  and  they, 

*I  do  not  profess  to  indicate  any  cne  building  which  exactly  corre- 
sponds to  what  I  have  attempted  to  Hpscribe,  but  there  are  several  both 
in  Italy  and  Egypt  that  seem  to  jusi.:^  the  simile. 


68  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

adding  a  few  further  attributes  of  power  to  those  they  now 
possess,  might  survive  as  independent  self-governing 
communities. 

This  is  the  cause  of  that  immense  complexity  which 
startles  and  at  first  bewilders  the  student  of  American  5 
institutions,  a  complexity  which  makes  American  history 
and  current  American  politics  so  difficult  to  the  European, 
who  finds  in  them  phenomena  to  which  his  own  experience 
supplies  no  parallel.  There  are  two  loyalties,  two  pa- 
triotisms; and  the  lesser  patriotism,  as  the  incident  in  the  10 
Episcopal  Convention  ^hows,  is  jealous  of  the  greater. 
There  are  two  governments,  covering  the  same  ground, 
commanding,  with  equally  direct  authority,  the  obedience 
of  the  same  citizen. 

The  casual  reader  of  American  political  intelligence  in   15 
European  newspapers  is  not  struck  by  this  phenomenon, 
because    State   politics    and    State   afl^airs   generally    are 
seldom  noticed  in  Europe.     Even  the  traveler  who  visits 
America   does   not   realize   its   importance,    because   the 
things  that  meet  his  eye  are  superficially  similar  all  over  20 
the  continent,  and  that  which  Europeans  call  the  machinery 
of  government  is  in  America  conspicuous  chiefly  by  its 
absence.     But  a  due  comprehension  of  this  double  organi- 
zation is  the  first  and  indispensable  step  to  the  compre- 
hension of  American  institutions:  as  the  elaborate  devices  25 
whereby  the  two  systems  of  government  are  kept  from 
clashing  are  the  most  curious  subject  of  study  which  those 
institutions  present. 

How  did  so  complex  a  system  arise,  and  what  influences 
have  molded  it  into  its  present  form  ?  This  is  a  question  30 
which  cannot  be  answered  without  a  few  words  of  historical 
retrospect.  I  am  sensible  of  the  danger  of  straying  into 
history,  and  the  more  anxious  to  avoid  this  danger,  be- 
cause the  task  of  describing  American  institutions  as  they 


EXPOSITION  69 

now  exist  is  more  than  sufficiently  heavy  for  one  writer 
and  one  book.  But  an  outHne,  a  brief  and  plain  outline, 
of  the  events  which  gave  birth  to  the  Federal  system  in 
America,  and  which  have  nurtured  national  feeling  without 
extinguishing  State  feeling,  seems  the  most  natural  in- 
troduction to  an  account  of  the  present  Constitution,  and 
may  dispense  with  the  need  of  subsequent  explanations 
and  digressions.  It  is  the  only  excursion  into  the  historical 
domain  which  I  shall  have  to  ask  the  reader  to  make. 


Suggestions:  How  many  main  points  has  this  chapter? 
State  them,  in  your  own  words.  Note  the  way  in  which  Mr. 
Bryce  tests  actual  conditions  by  these  rules,  so  to  speak. 

What  general  characteristics  have  Mr.  Bryce's  paragraphs, 
(a)  as  to  their  outward  form,  (b)  as  to  their  internal  structure.? 
How  many  different  methods  of  paragraph  development  can 
you  trace  ? 

What  of  the  sentences.?  Analyze  their  principal  rhetorical 
characteristics.  Note  the  cadence  of  these  sentences  when  they 
are  read   aloud. 

What  is  your  strongest  general  impression  of  Mr.  Bryce's 
style.?      Try  to  produce  a  similar  effect  in  your  own  theme. 


ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

The  relation  of  the  colleges  to  the  university. 
The  departments  and  the  college. 

The  organization  of  the  Presbyterian,  (Episcopal),  (Catholic) 
church. 
A  bank. 

A  social  settlement. 
My  preparatory  school. 
The  management  of  a  summer  hotel. 
The  organization  of  the  —  insurance  company. 
My  father's  business. 

The  mail  order  department  of  the  —  manufacturing  company. 
The  Salvation  Army. 


70  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

PARTY  ORGANIZATIONS* 

James  Bryce 

T^HE  Americans  are,  to  use  their  favorite  expression, 
^  a  highly  executive  people,  with  a  greater  ingenuity 
in  inventing  means,  and  a  greater  promptitude  in  adapting 
means  to  an  end,  than  any  European  race.  Nowhere 
are  large  undertakings  organized  so  skilfully;  nowhere  is  5 
there  so  much  order  with  so  much  complexity;  nowhere 
such  quickness  in  correcting  a  suddenly  discovered  defect, 
in  supplying  a  suddenly  arisen  demand. 

Government  by  popular  vote,  both  local  and  national, 
is  older  in  America  than  in  continental  Europe.  It  is  far  10 
more  complete  than  even  in  England.  It  deals  with 
larger  masses  of  men.  Its  methods  have  engaged  a  greater 
share  of  attention,  enlisted  more  ingenuity  and  skill  in 
their  service,  than  anywhere  else  in  the  world.  They 
have  therefore  become  more  elaborate  and,  so  far  as  mere  15 
mechanism  goes,  more  perfect  than  elsewhere. 

The  greatest  discovery  ever  made  in  the  art  of  war  was 
when  men  began  to  perceive  that  organization  and  dis- 
cipline count  for  more  than  numbers.  This  discovery 
gave  the  Spartan  infantry  a  long  career  of  victory  in  Greece,  20 
and  the  Swiss  infantry  a  not  less  brilliant  renown  in  the 
later  Middle  Ages.  The  Americans  made  a  similar 
discovery  in  politics  some  fifty  or  sixty  years  ago.  By 
degrees,  for  even  in  America  great  truths  do  not  burst 
full-grown  upon  the  world,  it  was  perceived  that  the  25 
victories  of  the  ballot-box,  no  less  than  the  sword,  must  be 
won  by  the  cohesion  and  disciplined  docility  of  the  troops, 
and  that  these  merits  can  only  be  secured  by  skilful 
^American  Commonwealth,  vol.  ii,  pi.  3,  cli.  59,  pp.  412-19. 


EXPOSITION  71 

organization  and  long-continued  training.  Both  parties 
flung  themselves  into  the  task,  and  the  result  haS  been  an 
extremely  complicated  system  of  'party  machinery,  firm 
yet  flexible,  delicate  yet  quickly  set  up  and  capable  of 
5  working  well  in  the  roughest  communities.  Strong 
necessity,  long  practice,  and  the  fierce  competition  of  the 
two  great  parties,  have  enabled  this  executive  people  to 
surpass  itself  in  the  sphere  of  electioneering  politics. 
Yet  the  principles  are  so  simple  that  it  will  be  the  narrator's 

10  fault  if  they  are  not  understood. 

One  preliminary  word  upon  the  object  of  a  party  or- 
ganization. To  a  European  politician,  by  which  I  mean 
one  who  knows  politics  but  does  not  know  America,  the 
aims  of  a  party  organization,  be  it  local  or  general,  seem 

15  to  be  four  in  number — 

Union — to  keep  the  party  together  and  to  prevent  it  from 
wasting   its   strength  by   dissensions   and  schisms. 

Recruiting — to  bring  in  new  voters,  e.  ^.,  immigrants  when 
they  obtain  citizenship,  young  men  as  they  reach  the  age 
20  of  suffrage,   new-comers,  or  residents  hitherto  indifferent 

or   hostile. 

Enthusiasm — to  excite  the  voters  by  the  sympathy  of  num- 
bers, and  the  sense  of  a  common  purpose,  rousing  them 
by  speeches   or   literature. 
25  Instruction — to   give    the    voters    some    knowledge    of    the 

political  issues  they  have  to  decide,  to  inform  them  of 
the  virtues  of  their  leaders,  and  the  crimes  of  their  op- 
ponents. 

These  aims,  or  at  least  the  first  three  of  them,  are  pursued 
30  by  the  party  organizations  of  America  with  eminent 
success.  But  they  are  less  important  than  a  fifth  object 
which  has  been  little  regarded  in  Europe,  though  in 
America  it  is  the  mainspring  of  the  whole  mechanism. 
This  is  the  selection  of  party  candidates;  and  it  is  im- 
35  portant,  not  only  because  the  elective  places  are  so  numer- 


72  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

ous,  far  more  numerous  than  in  any  European  country, 
but  because  they  are  tenable  for  short  terms,  so  that 
elections  frequently  recur.  Since  the  parties,  having  of 
late  had  no  really  distinctive  principles,  and  therefore  no 
well-defined  aims  in  the  direction  of  legislation  or  ad-  5 
ministration,  exist  practically  for  the  sake  of  filling  certain 
offices,  and  carrying  on  the  machinery  of  government, 
the  choice  of  those  members  of  the  party  whom  the  party 
is  to  reward,  and  who  are  to  strengthen  it  by  the  winning 
of  the  oflSces,  becomes  a  main  end  of  its  being.  10 

There  are  three  ways  by  which  in  self-governing  countries 
candidates  may  be  brought  before  electors.  One  is  by 
the  candidate's  offering  himself,  appealing  to  his  fellow 
citizens  on  the  strength  of  his  personal  merits,  or  family 
connections,  or  wealth,  or  local  influence.  This  was  a  15 
common  practice  in  most  English  constituencies  till  our 
own  time;  and  seems  to  be  the  practice  over  parliamentary 
Europe  still.  Another  is  for  a  group  or  junto  of  men 
influential  in  the  constituency  to  put  a  candidate  forward, 
intriguing  secretly  for  him  or  openly  recommending  him  20 
to  the  electors.  This  also  largely  prevailed  in  England, 
where,  in  counties,  four  or  five  of  the  chief  landowners 
used  to  agree  as  to  the  one  of  themselves  who  should  stand 
for  the  county;  or  to  choose  the  eldest  son  of  a  duke  or 
marquis  as  the  person  whom  his  rank  designated.*  So,  i5 
in  Scotch  boroughs,  a  little  knot  of  active  bailies  and  other 
citizens  combined  to  bring  out  a  candidate,  but  generally 
kept  their  action  secret,  for  "the  clique"  was  always  a 
term  of  reproach.  The  practice  is  common  in  France  now, 
where  the  committee  of  each  party  recommend  acandi-  30 
date. 

The  third  system  is  that  in  which  the  candidate   is 

*Thus,  in  Mr.  Disraeli's  novel  of  Tancred,  tlie  county  member,  a 
man  of  goocl  birth  and  lar^  estates,  offers  to  retire  in  order  to  make 
room  for  the  eldest  son  of  the  Duke  when  he  comes  of  age. 


EXPOSITION  73 

chosen  neither  by  himself  nor  by  the  self-elected  group, 
but  by  the  people  themselves,  i.  e.,  by  the  members  of  a 
party,  whether  assembled  in  mass  or  acting  through  rep- 
resentatives chosen  for  the  purpose.  This  plan  offers 
5  several  advantages.  It  promises  to  secure  a  good  candi- 
date, because  presumably  the  people  will  choose  a  suitable 
man.  It  encourages  the  candidate,  by  giving  him  the 
weight  of  party  support,  and  therefore  tends  to  induce 
good  men  to  come  forward.     It  secures  the  union  of  the 

10  party,  because  a  previous  vote  has  determined  that  the 
candidate  is  the  man  whom  the  majority  prefer,  and  the 
minority  are  therefore  likely,  having  had  their  say  and 
been  fairly  outvoted,  to  fall  into  line  and  support  him. 
This  is  the  system  which  now  prevails  from  Maine  to 

15  California,  and  is  indeed  the  keystone  of  transatlantic 
politics.  But  there  is  a  further  reason  for  it  than  those 
I  have  mentioned. 

That  no  American  dreams  of  offering  himself  for  a  post 
unless  he  has  been  chosen  by  the  party*  is  due  not  to  the 

20  fact  that  few  persons  have  the  local  preeminence  which 
the  social  conditions  of  Europe  bestow  on  the  leading 
landowners  of  a  neighborhood,  or  on  some  great  merchants 
or  employers  in  a  town,  nor  again  to  the  modesty  which 
makes  an  English  candidate  delay  presenting  himself  as  a 

25  candidate  for  Parliament  until  he  has  got  up  a  requisition 
to  himself  to  stand,  but  to  the  notion  that  the  popular 
mind  and  will  are  and  must  be  all  in  all,  that  the  people 
must  not  only  create  the  office-bearer  by  their  votes,  but 
even  designate  the  persons  for  whom  the  votes  may  be 

30  given.  For  a  man  to  put  himself  before  the  voters  is 
deemed  presumptuous,  because  an  encroachment  on  their 
right  to  say  whom  they  will  even  so  much  as  consider. 

*It  may  sometimes,  though  rarely,  be  a  schismatic  or  recalcitrant 
section  of  the  party,  as  will  be  seen  hereafter. 


74  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

The  theory  of  popular  sovereignty  requires  that  the  ruHng 
majority  must  name  its  own  standard-bearers  and  servants, 
the  candidates,  must  define  its  own  platform,  must  in 
every  way  express  its  own  mind  and  will.  Were  it  to 
leave  these  matters  to  the  initiative  of  candidates  offering  5 
themselves,  or  candidates  put  forward  by  an  unauthorized 
clique,  it  would  subject  itself  to  them,  would  be  passive 
instead  of  active,  would  cease  to  be  worshipped  as  the 
source  of  power.  A  system  for  selecting  candidates  is 
therefore  not  a  mere  contrivance  for  preventing  party  10 
dissensions,  but  an  essential  feature  of  matured  democracy. 
It  was  not  however  till  democracy  came  to  maturity  that 
the  system  was  perfected.  As  far  back  as  the  middle  of 
last  century  it  was  the  custom  in  Massachusetts,  and 
probably  in  other  colonies,  for  a  coterie  of  leading  citizens  15 
to  put  forward  candidates  for  the  offices  of  the  town  or 
colony,  and  their  nominations,  although  clothed  with  no 
authority  but  that  of  the  individuals  making  them,  were 
generally  accepted.*  This  lasted  on  after  the  Revolution, 
for  the  structure  of  society  still  retained  a  certain  aristo-  ^0 
cratic  quality.  Clubs  sprang  up  which,  especially  in  New 
York  State,  became  the  organs  of  groups  and  parties, 
brought  out  candidates,  and  conducted  election  cam- 
paigns; while  in  New  England  the  clergy  and  men  of 
substance  continued  to  act  as  leaders.  Presently,  as  the  25 
democratic  spirit  grew,  and  people  would  no  longer  ac- 
quiesce in  self-appointed  chiefs,  the  legislatures  began 
CO  be  recognized  as  the  bodies  to  make  nominations  for 
the  higher  Federal  and  State  offices.  Each  party  in 
Congress  nominated  the  candidate  to  be  run  for  the  30 
presidency,  each  party  in  a  State  legislature  the  candidate 
for  governor,  and  often  for  other  places  also.     This  lasted 

♦It  should  be  remembered  that  Mr.  Bryce  wrote  this  before  1888. 
[Editor.) 


EXPOSITION  7/; 

during  the  first  two  or  three  decades  of  the  present  century, 
till  the  electoral  suffrage  began  to  be  generally  lowered, 
and  a  generation  which  had  imbibed  Jeffersonian  principles 
had  come  to  manhood,  a  generation  so  filled  with  the  spirit 
5  of  democratic  equality  that  it  would  recognize  neither  the 
natural  leaders  whom  social  position  and  superior  intel- 
ligence indicated,  nor  the  official  leadership  of  legislative 
bodies.  As  party  struggles  grew  more  bitter,  a  party 
organization    became    necessary,    which    better    satisfied 

10  the  claims  of  petty  local  leaders,  which  knit  the  voters  in 
each  district  together  and  concentrated  their  efforts,  while 
it  expressed  the  absolute  equality  of  all  voters,  and  the 
right  of  each  to  share  in  determining  his  candidate  and 
his  party  platform.     The  building  up   of  this  new  or- 

15  ganization  was  completed,  for  the  Democratic  party, 
about  1835;  for  the  Whig  party  not  until  some  years  later. 
When  the  Republican  party  arose  about  1854,  it  reproduced 
so  closely,  or  developed  on  lines  so  similar,  the  methods 
which    experience    had    approved,    that    the    differences 

20  between  the  systems  of  the  two  great  parties  are  now  un- 
important, and  may  be  disregarded  in  the  sketch  I  have 
to  give.* 

The  essential  feature  of  the  system  is  that  it  is  from 
bottom  to  top  strictly  representative.     This  is  because  it 

25  has  power,  and  power  can  flow  only  from  the  people. 
An  organization  which  exists,  like  the  political  associations 
of  England,  solely  or  mainly  for  the  sake  of  canvassing, 
conducting  registration,  diffusing  literature,  getting  up 
courses  of  lectures,  holding  meetings  and  passing  resolu- 

30  tions,  has  little  or  no  power.  Its  object  is  to  excite,  or  to 
persuade,  or  to  manage  such  business  as  the  defective 

*What  makes  it  hard  to  present  a  perfectly  accurate  and  yet  concise 
description  is  that  there  are  variations  between  the  arrangements  in 
cities  and  those  in  rural  districts,  as  well  as  between  the  arrangements 
in  different  States. 


76  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

registration  system  of  the  country  leaves  to  be  fulfilled  by 
voluntary  agencies.  So  too  in  America  the  committees 
or  leagues  which  undertake  to  create  or  stimulate  opinion 
have  no  power,  and  need  not  be  strictly  representative. 
But  when  an  organization  which  the  party  is  in  the  habit 
of  obeying,  chooses  a  party  candidate,  it  exerts  power, 
power  often  of  the  highest  import,  because  it  practically 
narrows  the  choice  of  a  party,  that  is,  of  about  half  the 
people,  to  one  particular  person  out  of  the  many  for  whom 
they  might  be  inclined  to  vote.*  Such  power  would  not 
be  yielded  to  any  but  a  representative  body,  and  it  is 
yielded  to  the  bodies  I  shall  describe  because  they  are,  at 
least  in  theory,  representative. 


THE  NOMINATING  CONVENTION   AT  WORKf 

James  Bryce 

ASPIRANTS  hoping  to  obtain  the  party  nomination 
from  a  national  convention  may  be  divided  into   ^^ 
three  classes,  the  last  two  of  which,  as  will  appear  presently, 
are  not  mutually  exclusive,  viz. — 
Favorites.     Dark  Horses.     Favorite  Sons. 

*The  rapid  change  in  the  practice  of  England  in  this  point  is  a  curious 
symptom  of  the  progress  of  democratic  ideas  and  usages  tliere.  As 
late  as  the  general  elections  of  1868  and  1874,  nearly  all  candidates  of- 
fered themselves  to  the  electors,  though  some  professed  to  do  so  in  pur- 
suance of  requisitions  emanating  from  the  electors.  In  1880  many — 
I  think  most — Liberal  candidates  in  boroughs,  and  some  in  counties, 
were  chosen  by  the  local  party  associations,  and  appealed  to  the  Liberal 
electors  on  the  ground  of  having  been  so  chosen.  In  1885  nearly  all 
new  candidates  were  so  chosen,  and  a  man  offering  himself  against  the 
nominee  of  the  association  was  denounced  as  an  interloper  and  traitor 
to  the  party.  The  same  process  has  been  going  on  in  tlie  Tory  party, 
though  more  slowly. 

f  American  Commonwealth,    vol.  ii,  pt.  5,  ch.  70,  pp.  551-53. 


EXPOSITION  77 

A  Favorite  is  always  a  politician  well  known  over  the 
Union,  and  drawing  support  from  all  or  most  of  its  sections. 
He  is  a  man  who  has  distinguished  himself  in  Congress, 
or  in  the  war,  or  in  politics  of  some  State  so  large  that  its 
5  politics  are  matter  of  knowledge  and  interest  to  the  whole 
nation.  He  is  usually  a  person  of  conspicuous  gifts, 
whether  as  a  speaker,  or  a  party  manager,  or  an  ad- 
ministrator. The  drawback  to  him  is  that  in  making 
friends  he  has  also  made  enemies. 

10  A  Dark  Horse  is  a  person  not  very  widely  known  in 
the  country  at  large,  but  known  rather  for  good  than  for 
evil.  He  has  probably  sat  in  Congress,  been  useful  on 
committees,  and  gained  some  credit  among  those  who 
dealt  with  him  in  Washington.     Or  he  has  approved  him- 

15  self  a  safe  and  assiduous  party  man  in  the  political  cam- 
paigns of  his  own  and  neighboring  States,  yet  without 
reaching  national  prominence.  Sometimes  he  is  a  really 
able  man,  but  without  the  special  talents  that  win  populari- 
ty.    Still,  speaking  generally,  the  note  of  the  Dark  Horse 

20  is  respectability,  verging  on  colorlessness;  and  he  is  there- 
fore a  good  sort  of  person  to  fall  back  upon  when  able 
but  dangerous  Favorites  have  proved  impossible.  That 
native  mediocrity  rather  than  adverse  fortune  Las 
prevented    him   from   winning   fame    is    proved    by    \l^ 

25  fact    that    the    Dark     Horses    who    have    reached     th 
White  House,  if  they  have  seldom  turned  out  bad  presj 
dents,  have  even  more  seldom  turned  out  distinguishes  i 
ones. 

A  Favorite  Son  is  a  politician  respected  or  admired  in 

30  his  own  State,  but  little  regarded  beyond  it.  He  may  not 
be,  like  the  Dark  Horse,  little  known  to  the  nation  at 
large,  but  he  has  not  fixed  its  eye  or  filled  its  ear.  He  is 
usually  a  man  who  has  sat  in  the  State  legislature;  filled 
with  credit  the  post  of  State  governor;  perhaps  gone  as 


78  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

senator  or  representative  to  VV^ashington,  and  there  ap- 
proved himself  an  active  promoter  of  local  interests. 
Probably  he  possesses  the  qualities  which  gain  local 
popularity — geniality,  activity,  sympathy  with  the  dominant 
sentiment  and  habits  of  his  State;  or  while  endowed  with  5 
gifts  excellent  in  their  way,  he  has  lacked  the  audacity 
and  tenacity  which  push  a  man  to  the  front  through  a 
jostling  crowd.  More  rarely  he  is  a  demagogue  who  has 
raised  himself  by  flattering  the  masses  of  his  State  on  some 
local  questions,  or  a  skilful  handler  of  party  organizations  10 
who  has  made  local  bosses  and  spoilsmen  believe  that 
their  interests  are  safe  in  his  hands.  Anyhow,  his  person- 
ality is  such  as  to  be  more  effective  with  neighbors  than 
with  the  nation,  as  a  lamp  whose  glow  fills  the  side  chapel 
of  a  cathedral  sinks  to  a  spark  of  light  when  carried  into  15 
the  nave. 

A  Favorite  Son  may  be  also  a  Dark  Horse;  that  is 
to  say,  he  may  be  well  known  in  his  own  State,  but  so 
little  known  out  of  it  as  to  be  an  unlikely  candidate.  But 
he  need  not  be.  The  types  are  different,  for  as  there  are  20 
Favorite  Sons  whom  the  nation  knows  but  does  not  care 
for,  so  there  are  Dark  Horses  whose  reputation,  such  as  it 
is,  has  not  been  made  in  State  affairs,  and  who  rely  very 
little  on  State  favor. 

Suggestions:     (See  page  69.) 


ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Class  Organizations  at College. 

Class  Elections  at College. 

Societies  in  Our  High  School. 

The  New  England  Town  Meeting. 

The  "  Machine "  in  My  Home  Town. 

The  Kind  of  Man  Who  Is  Usually  Elected  Class-President. 


EXPOSITION  79 

NATIONAL   CHARACTERISTICS    AS    MOLDING 
PUBLIC  OPINION* 

James  Bryce 

AS  the  public  opinion  of  a  people  is  even  more  directly 
than    its    political    institutions    the    reflection    and 
expression  of  its  character,  it  is  convenient  to  begin  the 
analysis  of  opinion  in  America  by  noting  some  of  those 
5  general  features  of  national  character  which  give  tone  and 
color  to  the  people's  thoughts  and  feelings  on  politics. 
There  are,  of  course,  varieties  proper  to  different  classes, 
and  to  different  parts  of  the  vast  territory  of  the  Union; 
10  but  it  is  well  to  consider  first  such  characteristics  as  belong 
•  to  the  nation  as  a  whole,  and  afterward  to  examine  the 
various  classes  and  districts  of  the  country.      And  when 
I   speak   of   the   nation   I   mean   the   native   Americans. 
What  follows  is  not  applicable  to  the  recent  immigrants 
15  from  Europe,  and,  of  course,  even  less  applicable  to  the 
Southern  negroes;  though  both  these  elements  are  potent 
by  their  votes. 

The    Americans    are    a   good-natured    people,    kindly, 

helpful  to  one  another,  disposed  to  take  a  charitable  view 

20  even  of  wrongdoers.     Their  anger  sometimes  flames  up, 

but  the  fire  is  soon  extinct.     Nowhere  is  cruelty  more 

abhorred.     Even   a  mob   lynching  a  horse  thief  in   the 

West  has  consideration  for  the  criminal,   and  will  give 

him  a  good  drink  of  whisky  before  he  is  strung  up.     Cruel- 

25     ty  to  slaves  was  rare  while  slavery  lasted,  the  best  proof 

of  which  is  the  quietness   of   the   slaves   during   the  war 

when  all  the  men  and  many  of  the  boys  of  the  South  were 

serving  in  the  Confederate  armies.     As  everybody  knows, 

^American  Commonwealth,  v.  iii,  pt.  4,  ch.  80,  pp.  48-64. 


80  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

juries  are  more  lenient  to  offences  of  all  kinds  but  one, 
offences  against  women,  than  they  are  anywhere  in  Europe. 
The  Southern  ''rebels"  were  soon  forgiven;  and  though 
civil  wars  are  proverbially  bitter,  there  have  been  few 
struggles  in  which  the  combatants  did  so  many  little  5 
friendly  acts  for  one  another,  few  in  which  even  the 
vanquished  have  so  quickly  buried  their  resentments. 
It  is  true  that  newspapers  and  public  speakers  say  hard 
things  of  their  opponents;  but  this  is  a  part  of  the  game, 
and  is  besides  a  way  of  relieving  their  feelings:  the  bark  10 
is  sometimes  the  louder  in  order  that  a  bite  may  not  follow. 
Vindictiveness  shown  by  a  public  man  excites  general 
disapproval,  and  the  maxim  of  letting  bygones  be  bygones 
is  pushed  so  far  that  an  offender's  misdeeds  are  often 
forgotten  when  they  ought  to  be  remembered  against  him.   15 

All  the  world  knows  that  they  are  a  humorous  people. 
They  are  as  conspicuously  the  purveyors  of  humor  to  the 
nineteenth  century  as  the  French  were  the  purveyors  of 
wit  to  the  eighteenth.  Nor  is  this  sense  of  the  ludicrous 
side  of  things  confined  to  a  few  brilliant  writers.  It  is  20 
diffused  among  the  whole  people;  it  colors  their  ordinary 
life,  and  gives  to  their  talk  that  distinctly  new  flavor  which 
a  European  palate  enjoys.  Their  capacity  for  enjoying 
a  joke  against  themselves  was  oddly  illustrated  at  the  outset 
of  the  Civil  War,  a  time  of  stern  excitement,  by  the  merri-  25 
ment  which  arose  over  the  hasty  retreat  of  the  Federal 
troops  at  the  battle  of  Bull  Run.  When  William  M. 
Tweed  was  ruling  and  robbing  New  York,  and  had  set  on 
the  bench  men  who  were  openly  prostituting  justice,  the 
citizens  found  the  situation  so  amusing  that  they  almost  30 
forgot  to  be  angry.  Much  of  President  Lincoln's  popular- 
ity, and  much  also  of  the  gift  he  showed  for  restoring  con- 
fidence to  the  North  at  the  darkest  moments  of  the  war, 
was  due  to  the  humorous  way  he  used  to  turn  things, 


EXPOSITION  81 

conveying  the  impression  of  not  being  himself  uneasy,  even 
when  he  was  most  so. 

That  indulgent  view  of  mankind  which  I  have  already 
mentioned,  a  view  odd  in  a  people  whose  ancestors  were 
5  penetrated  with  the  belief  in  original  sin,  is  strengthened 
by  this  wish  to  get  amusement  out  of  everything.  The 
want  of  seriousness  which  it  produces  may  be  more 
apparent  than  real.  Yet  it  has  its  significance;  for  people 
become  affected  by  the  language  they  use,  as  we  see  men 

10  grow  into  cynics  when  they  have  acquired  the  habit  of 
talking  cynicism  for  the  sake  of  effect. 

They  are  a  hopeful  people.  Whether  or  no  they  are 
right  in  calling  themselves  a  new  people,  they  certainly 
seem  to  feel  in  their  veins  the  bounding  pulse  of  youth. 

15  They  see  a  long  vista  of  years  stretching  out  before  them, 
in  which  they  will  have  time  enough  to  cure  all  their 
faults,  to  overcome  all  the  obstacles  that  block  their  path. 
They  look  at  their  enormous  territory  with  its  still  only  half- 
explored  sources  of  wealth,  they  reckon  up  the  growth  of 

20  their  population  and  their  products,  they  contrast  the 
comfort  and  intelligence  of  their  laboring  classes  with  the 
condition  of  the  masses  of  the  Old  World.  They  remember 
the  dangers  that  so  long  threatened  the  Union  from  the 
slave  power,  and  the  rebellion  it  raised,  and  see  peace  and 

25  harmony  now  restored,  the  South  more  prosperous  and 
contented  than  at  any  previous  epoch,  perfect  good  feeling 
between  all  sections  of  the  country.  It  is  natural  for  them 
to  believe  in  their  star.  And  this  sanguine  temper  makes 
them  tolerant  of  evils  which  they  regard  as  transitory, 

30  removable  as  soon  as  time  can  be  found  to  root  them  up. 

They  have  unbounded  faith  in  what  they  call  the  People 

and  in  a  democratic  system  of  government.     The  great 

States  of  the  European  continent  are  distracted  by  the 

contests  of  Republicans  and  Monarchists,  and  of  rich  and 


82  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

poor, — contests   which  go   down   to   the   foundations   of 
government,   and   in   France   are  further  embittered   by 
rehgious  passions.     Even  in  England   the  ancient  Con 
stitution  is  always  under  repair,  and  while  many  think  it  is 
being  ruined   by   changes,   others  hold  that  still  greater  5 
changes  are  needed  to  make  it  tolerable.   No  such  questions 
trouble  American  minds,  for  nearly  everybody  believes, 
and  everybody  declares,  that  the  frame  of  government 
is  in  its  main  lines  so  excellent  that  such  reforms  as  seem 
called  for  need  not  touch  those  lines,  but  are  required  only   10 
to  protect  the  Constitution  from  being  perverted  by  the 
parties.     Hence    a    further    confidence    that    the    people 
are  sure  to  decide  right  in  the  long  run,  a  confidence  in- 
evitable and  essential  in  a  government  which  refers  every 
question  to  the  arbitrament  of  numbers.     There  have,  of   15 
course,  been  instances  where  the  once  insignificant  minority 
proved  to  have  been  wiser  than  the  majority  of  the  moment. 
Such  was  eminently  the  case  in  the  great  slavery  struggle. 
But  here  the  minority  prevailed  by  growing  into  a  majority 
as  events  developed  the  real  issues,  so  that  this  also  has  20 
been  deemed  a  ground  for  holding  that  all  minorities  which 
have  right  on  their  side  will  bring  round  their  antagonists, 
and  in  the  long  run  win  by  voting  power.     If  you  ask 
an  intelligent  citizen  why  he  so  holds,  he  will  answer  that 
truth  and  justice  are  sure  to  make  their  way  into  the  minds  25 
and   consciences   of   the   majority.     This   is   deemed   an 
axiom,  and  the  more  readily  so  deemed,  because  truth  is 
identified   with   common    sense,    the   quality   which   the 
average  citizen  is  most  confidently  proud  of  possessing. 

This  feeling   shades   off  into   another,   externally   like   30 
it,    but    at    bottom    distinct — the   feeling    not    only  that 
the  majority,  be  it  right  or  wrong,  will  and  must  prevail, 
but  that  its  being  the  majority  proves  it  to  be  right.     This 
feeling  appears  in  the  guise  sometimes  of  piety  and  some- 


EXPOSITION  83 

times  of  fatalism.  Religious  minds  hold — you  find  the 
•  idea  underlying  many  books  and  hear  it  in  many  pulpits — 
that  Divine  Providence  has  especially  chosen  and  led  the 
American  people  to  work  out  a  higher  type  of  freedom  and 
5  civilization  than  any  other  state  has  yet  attained,  and  that 
this  great  work  will  surely  be  brought  to  a  happy  issue 
by  the  protecting  hand  which  has  so  long  guided  it.  Be- 
fore others  who  are  less  sensitive  to  such  impressions,  the 
will  of  the  people  looms  up  like  one  of  the  irresistible 

10  forces  of  nature,  which  you  must  obey,  and  which  you  can 
turn  and*  use  only  by  obeying.  In  the  famous  words  of 
Bacon,  non  nisi  parendo  vincitur. 

The  Americans  are  an  educated  people,  compared  with 
the  whole  mass  of  the  population  in  any  European  country 

15  except  Switzerland,  parts  of  Germany,  Norway,  Iceland 
and  Scotland;  that  is  to  say,  the  average  of  knowledge  is 
higher,  the  habit  of  reading  and  thinking  more  diffused, 
than  in  any  other  country. 

I  speak,  of  course,  of  the  native  Americans,   exclude 

20  ing  negroes  and  recent  immigrants.  They  know  the 
constitution  of  their  own  country,  they  follow  public 
affairs,  they  join  in  local  government  and  learn  from 
it  how  government  must  be  carried  on,  and  in  par- 
ticular how   discussion   must  be  conducted  in  meetings, 

25  and  its  results  tested  at  elections.  The  town  meetini 
has  been  the  most  perfect  school  of  self-government  in 
any  modern  country.  They  exercise  their  minds  ci. 
theological  questions,  debating  points  of  Christian  doctrine 
with  no  small  acuteness.*     Women  in  particular,  though 

30  their  chief  reading  is  fiction  and  theology,  pick  up  at  the 
public  schools  and  from  the  popular  magazines  far  more 

*See,  for  a  curious,  though  it  must  be  admitted,  somewhat  dismal 
account  of  these  theological  discussions  among  the  ordinary  citizens 
of  a  small  Western  community,  the  striking  novel  of  Mr.  E.  W.  Howe, 
The  Story  of  a  CouMry  Town. 


84  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

miscellaneous  information  than  the  women  of  any  Euro- 
pean country  possess,  and  this  naturally  tells  on  the  in-    ' 
telligence  of  the  men. 

That   the   education   of   the   masses   is   nevertheless   a 
superficial  education  goes  without  saying.     It  is  sufficient  5 
to  enable  them  to  think  they  know  something  about  the 
great  problems  of  politics:  insufficient  to  show  them  how 
little  they  know.   The  public  elementary  school  gives  every- 
body the  key  to  knowledge  in  making  reading  and  writing 
familiar,  but  it  has  not  time  to  teach  him  how  to  use  the   10 
key,  whose  use  is,  in  fact,  by  the  pressure  of  daily  work, 
almost  confined  to  the  newspaper  and  the  magazine.  So  we 
may  say  that  if  the  political  education  of  the  average  Ameri- 
can voter  be  compared  with  that  of  the  average  voter   in 
Europe,  it  stands  high;  but  if  it  be  compared  with  the   15 
functions  which  the  theory  of  the  American  government 
lays  on  him,  which  its  spirit  implies,  which  the  methods 
of  its  party  organization  assume,  its  inadequacy  is  manifest. 
This  observation,  however,  is  not  so  much  a  reproach  to 
the  schools,  which  at  least  do  what  the  English  schools  20 
omit — instruct  the  child  in  the  principles  of  the  Constitution 
— as  a  tribute  to  the  height  of  the  ideal  which  the  American 
conception  of  popular  rule  sets  up. 

For  the  functions  of  the  citizen  are  not,  as  has  hither- 
to been  the  case  in  Europe,  confined  to  the  choosing  of  25 
legislatures,  who  are  then  left  to  settle  issues  of  policy 
and  select  executive  rulers.  The  American  citizen  is 
virtually  one  of  the  governors  of  the  republic.  Issues 
are  decided  and  rulers  selected  by  the  direct  popular  vote. 
Elections  are  so  frequent  that  to  do  his  duty  at  them  a  30 
citizen  ought  to  be  constantly  watching  public  afl^airs 
with  a  full  comprehension  of  the  principles  involved  in 
them,  and  a  judgment  of  the  candidates  derived  from  a 
criticism  of  their  arguments  as  well  as  a  recollection  of 


EXPOSITION  85 

their  past  careers.  As  has  been  said,  the  instruction 
received  in  the  common  schools  and  from  the  newspapers, 
and  supposed  to  be  developed  by  the  practice  of  primaries 
and  conventions,  while  it  makes  the  voter  deem  himself 
5  capable  of  governing,  does  not  completely  fit  him  to  weigh 
the  real  merits  of  statesmen,  to  discern  the  true  grounds 
on  which  questions  ought  to  be  decided,  to  note  the  drift 
of  events  and  idiscover  the  direction  in  which  parties  are 
being  carried.     He  is  like  a  sailor  who  knows  the  spars 

10  and  ropes  of  the  ship  and  is  expert  in  working  her,  but  is 
ignorant  of  geography  and  navigation;  who  can  perceive 
that  some  of  the  officers  are  smart  and  others  dull,  but 
cannot  judge  which  of  them  is  qualified  to  use  the  sex- 
tant or  will  best  keep  his  head  during  a  hurricane. 

15  They  are  a  moral  and  well-conducted  people.  Setting 
aside  the  colluvies  gentium  which  one  finds  in  Western 
mining  camps,  and  which  popular  literature  has  presented 
to  Europeans  as  far  larger  than  it  really  is,  setting  aside 
also  the  rabble  of  a  few  great  cities  and  the  negroes  of  the 

20  South,  the  average  of  temperance,  chastity,  truthfulness, 
and  general  probity  is  somewhat  higher  than  in  any  of 
the  great  nations  of  Europe.  The  instincts  of  the  native 
farmer  or  artisan  are  almost  invariably  kindly  and  charit- 
able.  He  respects  the  law;   he  is  deferential  to  women  and 

25  indulgent  to  children;  he  attaches  an  almost  excessive 
value  to  the  possession  of  a  genial  manner  and  the  ob- 
servance of  domestic  duties. 

They  are  also  a  religious  people.     It  is  not  merely  that 
they  respect  religion  and  its  ministers,  for  that  one  might 

80  say  of  Russians  or  Sicilians,  not  merely  that  they  are 
assiduous  churchgoers  and  Sunday-school  teachers,  but 
that  they  have  an  intelligent  interest  in  the  form  of  faith 
they  profess,  are  pious  without  superstition,  and  zealous 
without  bigotry.     The  importance  which  they  still,  though 


86  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

less  than  formerly,  attach  to  dogmatic  propositions,  does 
not  prevent  them  from  feeling  the  moral  side  of  their 
theology.  Christianity  influences  conduct,  not  indeed 
half  as  much  as  in  theory  it  ought,  but  probably  more  than 
it  does  in  any  other  modern  country,  and  far  more  than  it  5 
did  in  the  so-called  ages  of  faith. 

Nor  do  their  moral  and  religious  impulses  remain  in 
the  soft  haze  of  self-complacent  sentiment.  The  desir*^ 
to  expunge  or  cure  the  visible  evils  of  the  world  is  strong. 
Nowhere  are  so  many  philanthropic  and  reformatory  10 
agencies  at  work.  Zeal  outruns  discretion,  outruns  the 
possibilities  of  the  case,  in  not  a  few  of  the  efforts  made, 
as  well  by  legislation  as  by  voluntary  action,  to  suppress 
vice,  to  prevent  intemperance,  to  purify  popular  literature. 

Religion  apart,  they  are  an  unreverential  people.     I  do   15 
not  mean  irreverent, — far  from  it;  nor  do  I  mean  that 
they  have  not  a  great  capacity  for  hero-worship,  as  they 
have  many  a  time  shown.     I  mean  that  they  are  litt'e 
disposed,  especially  in  public  questions — political,  economi- 
cal, or  social — to  defer  to  the  opinions  of  those  who  are   20 
wiser  or  better  instructed  than  themselves.     Everything 
tends  to  make  the  individual  independent  and  self-reliant. 
He  goes  early  into  the  world;  he  is  left  to  make  his  way 
alone;  he  tries  one  occupation  after  another,  if  the  first  or 
second  venture  does  not  prosper;  he  gets  to  think  that  25 
each  man  is  his  own  best  helper  and  adviser.     Thus  he  is 
led,  I  will  not  say  to  form  his  own  opinions,  for  even  in 
America  few  are  those  who  do  that,  but  to  fancy  that  he 
has  formed  them,  and  to  feel  little  need  of  aid  from  others 
toward  correcting  them.      There  is,  therefore,  less   dis-   30 
position  than  in  Europe  to  expect  light  and  leading  on 
public  affairs  from  speakers  or  writers.     Oratory  is  not 
directed    toward     instruction,    but    toward    stimulation. 
Special  knowledge,  which  commands  deference  in  applied 


EXPOSITION  87 

science  or  in  finance,  does  not  command  it  in  politics, 
because  that  is  not  deemed  a  special  subject,  but  one  within 
the  comprehension  of  every  practical  man.  Politics  is, 
to  be  sure,  a  profession,  and  so  far  might  seem  to  need 
5  professional  aptitudes.  But  the  professional  politician 
is  not  the  man  who  has  studied  statesmanship,  but  the 
man  who  has  practiced  the  art  of  running  conventions  and 
winning  elections. 

Even  that  strong  point  of  America,  the  completeness 

10  and  highly  popular  character  of  local  government,  con- 
tributes to  lower  the  standard  of  attainment  expected  in  a 
public  man,  because  the  citizens  judge  all  politics  by  the 
politics  they  see  first  and  know  best — those  of  their  town- 
ship or  city,  and  fancy  that  he  who  is  fit  to  be  selectman, 

15  or  county  commissioner,  or  alderman,  is  fit  to  sit  in  the 
great  council  of  the  nation.  Like  the  shepherd  in  Virgil, 
they  think  the  only  difference  between  their  town  and 
Rome  is  in  its  size,  and  believe  that  what  does  for  La- 
Fayetteville  will  do  well  enough  for  Washington.     Hence 

20  when  a  man  of  statesmanlike  gifts  appears,  he  has  little 
encouragement  to  take  a  high  and  statesmanlike  tone, 
for  his  words  do  not  necessarily  receive  weight  from  his 
position.  He  fears  to  be  instructive  and  hortatory,  lest 
such  an  attitude  should  expose  him  to  ridicule;  and  in 

25  America  ridicule  is  a  terrible  power.  Nothing  escapes  it. 
Few  have  the  courage  to  face  it.  In  the  indulgence  of  it 
even  this  humane  race  can  be  unfeeling. 

They  are  a  busy  people.     I  have  already  observed  that 
the  leisured  class  is  relatively  small,  is  in  fact  confined  to  a 

30  few  Eastern  cities.  The  citizen  has  little  time  to  think 
about  political  problems.  Engrossing  all  the  working 
hours,  his  avocation  leaves  him  only  stray  moments  for 
this  fundamental  duty.  It  is  true  that  he  admits  his 
responsibilities,  considers  himself  a  member  of  a  party, 


88  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

takes  some  interest  in  current  events.  But  although  he 
would  reject  the  idea  that  his  thinking  should  be  done  for 
him,  he  has  not  leisure  to  do  it  for  himself,  and  must 
practically  lean  upon  and  follow  his  party.  It  astonishes 
an  English  visitor  to  find  how  small  a  part  politics  plays  in  5 
conversation  among  the  wealthier  classes  and  generally 
in  the  cities.  During  a  tour  of  four  months  in  America 
in  the  autumn  of  1881,  in  which  I  had  occasion  to  mingle 
with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men  in  all  parts  of  the 
country,  and  particularly  in  the  Eastern  cities,  I  never  once  10 
heard  American  politics  discussed  except  when  I  or  some 
other  European  brought  the  subject  on  the  carpet.  In 
a  presidential  year,  and  especially  during  the  months  of  a 
presidential  campaign,  there  is,  of  course,  abundance  of 
private  talk,  as  well  as  of  public  speaking,  but  even  then  15 
the  issues  raised  are  largely  personal  rather  than  political 
in  the  European  sense.  But  at  other  times  the  visitor  is 
apt  to  feel — more,  I  think,  than  he  feels  anywhere  in 
Britain — that  his  host  has  been  heavily  pressed  by  his  own 
business  concerns  during  the  day,  and  that  when  the  hour  20 
of  relaxation  arrives  he  gladly  turns  to  lighter  and  more 
agreeable  topics  than  the  state  of  the  nation.  This 
remark  is  less  applicable  to  the  dwellers  in  villages.  There 
is  plenty  of  political  chat  round  the  store  at  the  cross- 
roads, and  though  it  is  rather  in  the  nature  of  gossip  than  25 
of  debate,  it  seems,  along  with  the  practice  of  local  govern- 
ment, to  sustain  the  interest  of  ordinary  folk  in  public 
affairs.* 

The  want  of  serious  and  sustained  thinking  is  not 
confined  to  politics.     One  feels  it  even  more  as  regards  30 

*The  European  country  where  the  common  people  talk  most  about 
politics  is,  I  think,  Greece.  I  remember,  for  instance,  in  crossinjj:  the 
channel  which  divides  (^ephalonia  from  Ithaca,  to  have  heard  the  i)oat- 
men  discuss  a  recent  ministerial  crisis  at  Athens  during'  the  whole  voyage 
with  the  liveliest  interest  and  apparently  considerable  knowledge. 


EXPOSITION  89 

economical  and  social  questions.  To  it  must  be  ascribed 
the  vitality  of  certain  prejudices  and  fallacies  which  could 
scarcely  survive  the  continuous  application  of  such  vigorous 
minds  as  one  finds  among  the  Americans.  Their  quick 
5  perceptions  serve  them  so  well  in  business  and  in  the  or- 
dinary affairs  of  life  that  they  do  not  feel  the  need  for  minute 
investigation  and  patient  reflection  on  the  underlying 
principles  of  things.  They  are  apt  to  ignore  difficulties, 
and  when  they  can  no  longer  ignore  them,  they  will  evade 

10  them  rather  than  lay  siege  to  them  according  to  the  rules 
of  art.  The  sense  that  there  is  no  time  to  spare  haunts  an 
American  even  when  he  might  find  the  time,  and  would 
do  best  for  himself  by  finding  it. 

Some  one  will  say  that  an  aversion  to  steady  thinking 

15  belongs  to  the  average  man  everywhere.  Admitting  this, 
I  must  repeat  once  more  that  we  are  now  comparing  the 
Americans  not  with  average  men  in  other  countries,  but 
with  the  ideal  citizens  of  a  democracy.  We  are  trying 
them  by  the  standard  which  the  theory  of  their  govern- 

20  ment  assumes.  In  other  countries  statesmen  or  philoso- 
phers do,  and  are  expected  to  do,  the  solid  thinking  for 
the  bulk  of  the  people.  Here  the  people  are  expected  to  do 
it  for  themselves.  To  say  they  do  it  imperfectly  is  not  to 
deny  them  the  credit  of  doing  it  better  than  a  European 

25  philosopher  might  have  predicted. 

They  are  a  commercial  people,  whose  point  of  view  is 
primarily  that  of  persons  accustomed  to  reckon  profit 
and  loss.  Their  impulse  is  to  apply  a  direct  practical 
test  to  men  and  measures,  to  assume  that  men  who  have 

30  got  on  fastest  are  the  smartest  men,  and  that  a  scheme 
which  seems  to  pay  well  deserves  to  be  supported.  Ab- 
stract reasonings  they  dislike,  subtle  reasonings  they 
suspect;  they  accept  nothing  as  practical  which  is  not 
plain,   downright,   apprehensible  by  an  ordinary  under- 


90  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

standing.  Although  open-minded,  so  far  as  willingness 
to  listen  goes,  they  are  hard  to  convince,  because  they 
have  really  made  up  their  minds  on  most  subjects,  having 
adopted  the  prevailing  notions  of  their  locality  or  party 
as  truths  due  to  their  own  reflection.  5 

It  may  seem  a  contradiction  to  remark  that  with  this 
shrewdness  and  the  sort  of  hardness  it  produces,  they  are 
nevertheless  an  impressionable  people.  Yet  this  is  true. 
It  is  not  their  intellect;  however,  that  is  impressionable, 
but  their  imagination  and  emotions,  which  respond  in  10 
unexpected  ways  to  appeals  made  on  behalf  of  a  cause 
which  seems  to  have  about  it  something  noble  or  pathetic. 
They  are  capable  of  an  ideality  surpassing  that  of  English- 
men or  Frenchmen. 

They   are   an   unsettled   people.     In   no   State  of  the  15 
Union  is  the  bulk  of  the  population  so  fixed  in  its  residence 
as  everywhere  in  Europe;  in  many  it  is  almost  nomadic. 
Nobody  feels  rooted  to  the  soil.     Here  to-day  and  gone  to- 
morrow,   he   cannot   readily   contract   habits   of   trustful 
dependence  on  his  neighbors.*     Community  of  interest,  20 
or  of  belief  in  a  such  cause  as  temperance,  or  protection 
for  native  industry,  unites  him  for  a  time  with  others 
similarly  minded,  but  congenial  spirits  seldom  live  long 
enough  together  to  form  a  school  or  type  of  local  opinion 
which   develops    strength    and    becomes   a  proselytizing  i5 
force.     Perhaps  this  tends  to  prevent  the  growth  of  variety 
in   opinion.     When   a   man   arises   with  some  power  of 
original  thought  in  politics,  he  is  feeble  if  isolated,  and  is 
depressed  by  his  insignificance,  whereas  if  he  grows  up  in 
favorable    soil    with    sympathetic    minds    around    him,  30 
whom  he  can  in  prolonged  intercourse  permeate  with  his 

*Forly  years  a^o  this  was  much  less  true  of  New  England  than  it  is 
to-day.  There  are  districts  in  the  South  where  tlie  population  is  stag- 
nant, but  these  are  backward  districts,  not  affecting  the  opinion  of  the 
country. 


EXPOSITION  91 

ideas,  he  learns  to  speak  with  confidence  and  soars  on 
the  wings  of  his  disciples.  Whether  or  no  there  be  truth 
in  this  suggestion,  one  who  considers  the  variety  of  con- 
ditions under  which  men  live  in  America  may  find  ground 
5  for  surprise  that  there  should  be  so  few  independent 
schools  of  opinion. 

But  even  while  an  unsettled,  they  are  nevertheless  an 
associative,  because  a  sympathetic  people.  Although  the 
atoms   are  in   constant  motion,  they  have  a  strong    at- 

10  traction  for  one  another.  Each  man  catches  his  neighbor's 
sentiment  more  quickly  and  more  easily  than  happens  with 
the  English.  That  sort  of  reserve  and  isolation,  that 
tendency  rather  to  repel  than  to  invite  confidence,  which 
foreigners  attribute  to  the  Englishman,  though  it  belongs 

15   rather  to  the  upper  and  middle  class  than  to  the  nation 

generally,  is,  though  not  absent,  yet  less  marked  in  Ameri- 

•     ca.*     It  seems  to  be  one  of  the  notes  of  difference  between 

the  two  branches  of  the  race.     In  the  United  States,  since 

each  man  likes  to  feel  that  his  ideas  raise  in  other  minds 

20  the  same  emotions  as  in  his  own,  a  sentiment  or  impulse 
is  rapidly  propagated  and  quickly  conscious  of  its  strength. 
Add  to  this  the  aptitude  for  organization  which  their 
history  and  institutions  have  educed,  and  one  sees  how  the 
tendency  to  form  and  the  talent  to  work    combinations 

25  for  a  political  or  any  other  object  has  become  one  of 
the  great  features  of  the  country.  Hence,  too,  the  im- 
mense strength  of  party.  It  rests  not  only  on  interest 
and  habit  and  the  sense  of  its  value  as  a  means  of  work- 
ing the  government,  but  also  on  the  sympathetic  element 

30  *i  (Jq  not  mean  that  Americans  are  more  apt  to  unbosom  themselves 
to  strangers,  but  that  they  have  rather  more  adaptiveness  than  the  Eng- 
lish, and  are  less  disposed  to  stand  alone  and  care  nothing  for  the  opinion 
of  others.  It  is  worth  noticing  that  Americans  traveling  abroad  seem 
to  get  more  easily  into  touch  with  the  inhabitants  of  the  country  than  the 
English  do:  nor  have  they  the  English  habit  of  caHing  those  inhabitants — 
Frenchmen,  for  instance,  or  Germans — "the  natives." 


92  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and    instinct    of    combination    ingrained  in  the  national 
character. 

They  are  a  changeful  people.     Not  fickle,  for  they  are 
if  anything  too  tenacious  of  ideas  once  adopted,  too  fast 
bound  by  party  ties,  too  willing  to  pardon  the  errors  of  a  5 
cherished  leader.     But  they  have  what  chemists  call  low 
specific   heat;    they   grow   warm   suddenly    and    cool    as 
suddenly;   they   are   liable   to   swift   and   vehement   out- 
bursts of  feeling  which  rush  like  wildfire  across  the  country, 
gaining  glow,   like  the  wheel  of  a  railway  car,   by  the   10 
accelerated   motion.     The   very   similarity   of   ideas   and 
equality  of  conditions  which  makes  them  hard  to  convince 
at  first  makes  a  conviction  once  implanted  run  its  course 
the.  more  triumphantly.     They  seem  all  to  take  flame  at 
once,  because  what  has  told  upon  one  has  told  in  the  same   15 
way  upon  all  the  rest,  and  the  obstructing  and  separating 
barriers  which  exist  in  Europe  scarcely  exist  here.     No-    - 
where  is  the  saying  so  applicable  that  nothing  succeeds 
like  success.     The  Native  American  or  so-called  Know- 
Nothing  party  had  in  two  years  from  its  foundation  be-   '20 
come  a  tremendous  force,  running,   and   seeming  for  a 
time  likely  to  carry,  its  own  presidential  candidate.     In 
three  years  more  it  was  dead  without  hope  of  revival. 
Now  and  then,  as  for  instance  in  the  elections  of  1874-75, 
there  comes  a  rush  of  feeling  so  sudden  and  tremendous,   25 
that  the  name  of  Tidal  Wave  has  been  invented  to  describe 
it. 

After  this  it  may  seem  a  paradox  to  add  that  the  Ameri- 
cans are  a  conservative  people.  Yet  anyone  who  ob- 
serves the  power  of  habit  among  them,  the  tenacity  with  30 
which  old  institutions  and  usages,  legal  and  theological 
formulas,  have  been  clung  to,  will  admit  the  fact.  A 
love  for  what  is  old  and  established  is  in  their  English 
blood.     Moreover,  prosperity  helps  to  make  them  con- 


EXPOSITION  93 

servative.  They  are  satisfied  with  the  world  they  Hve  in, 
for  they  have  found  it  a  good  world,  in  which  they  have 
grown  rich  and  can  sit  under  their  own  vine  and  fig-tree, 
none  making  them  afraid.  They  are  proud  of  their 
5  history  and  of  their  Constitution,  which  has  come  out  of 
the  furnace  of  civil  war  with  scarcely  the  smell  of  fire  upon 
it.  It  is  little  to  say  that  they  do  not  seek  change  for  the 
sake  of  change,  because  the  nations  that  do  this  exist 
only  in  the  fancy  of  alarmist  philosophers.     There  are 

10  nations,  howevei,  whose  impatience  of  existing  evils, 
or  whose  proneness  to  be  allured  by  visions  of  a  brighter 
future,  makes  them  underestimate  the  risk  of  change, 
nations  that  will  pull  up  the  plant  to  see  whether  it  has 
begun  to  strike  root.     This  is  not  the  way  of  the  Americans. 

15  They  are  no  doubt  ready  to  listen  to  suggestions  from  any 
quarter.  They  do  not  consider  that  an  institution  is 
justified  by  its  existence,  but  admit  everything  to  be  matter 
for  criticism.  Their  keenly  competitive  spirit  and  pride 
in  their  own  ingenuity  have  made  them  quicker  than  any 

20  other  people  to  adopt  and  adapt  inventions:  telephones 
were  in  use  in  every  little  town  over  the  West,  while  in 
the  City  of  London  men  were  just  beginning  to  wonder 
whether  they  could  be  made  to  pay.  I  have  remarked 
in  an  earlier  chapter  that  the  fondness  for  trying  experi- 

25  ments  has  produced  a  good  deal  of  hasty  legislation, 
especially  in  the  newer  States,  but  that  some  of  it  has  al- 
ready been  abandoned.  But  these  admissions  do  not 
affect  the  main  proposition.  The  Americans  are  at 
bottom  a  conservative  people,  in  virtue  both  of  the  deep 

30  instincts  of  their  race  and  of  that  practical  shrewdness 
which  recognizes  the  value  of  permanence  and  solidity  in 
institutions.  They  are  conservative  in  their  fundamental 
beliefs,  in  the  structure  of  their  governments,  in  their 
social  and  domestic  usages.     They  are  like  a  tree  whose 


94  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

pendulous  shoots  quiver  and  rustle  with  the  lightest  breeze, 
while  its  roots  enfold  the  rock  with  a  grasp  which  storms 
cannot  loosen. 

Suggestions;  In  this  chapter  should  be  noted  especially 
the  simple,  clear,  and  adequate  plan,  or  "structure"  of  the 
exposition.  Describe  this  plan  and  make  a  diagram  of  it,  if 
necessary. 

Do  you  find  here  paragraphs  of  the  same  type  as  those  in  the 
first  and  second  selections  ?  What  of  the  topic-sentences  here  ? 
What  use  is  made  of  concrete  illustration.? 

In  treating  the  adapted  subject,  make  a  list  of  what  seem 
to  you  the  three  or  four  chief  characteristics  of  your  fellow 
students,  as  a  whole;  then  explain  these,  with  ample  illustration. 
Be  sure  that  your  generalizations  are  coordinate  and  relevant. 
Be  careful  to  make  very  clear  the  transitions  from  one  point  to 
another.  Study  Mr.  Bryce's  transition  sentences  and  para- 
graphs. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECT 

Student  characteristics  as  molding  opinion  in  my    college. 


CHILDHOOD  AND  EARLY  EDUCATION* 

John  Stuart  Mill 

IT  seems  proper  that  I  should  prefix  to  the  following 
biographical  sketch,  some  mention  of  the  reasons  5 
which  have  made  me  think  it  desirable  that  I  should  leave 
behind  me  such  a  memorial  of  so  uneventful  a  life  as 
mine.  I  do  not  for  a  moment  imagine  that  any  part  of 
what  I  have  to  relate  can  be  interesting  to  the  public  as  a 
narrative,  or  as  being  connected  with  myself.  But  I  10 
have  thought  that  in  an  age  in  which  education  and  its 
♦From  Autobiography,  New  York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co. 


EXPOSITION  95 

improvement  are  the  subject  of  more,  if  not  of  profounder, 
study  than  at  any  former  period  of  English  history,  it 
may  be  useful  that  there  should  be  some  record  of  an 
education  which  was  unusual  and  remarkable,  and  which, 

5  whatever  else  it  may  have  done,  has  proved  how  much 
more  than  is  commonly  supposed  may  be  taught,  and 
well  taught,  in  those  early  years  which,  in  the  common 
modes  of  what  is  called  instruction,  are  little  better  than 
wasted.     It  has  also  seemed  to  me  that  in  an  age  of  transi- 

10  tion  in  opinions,  there  may  be  somewhat  both  of  interest 
and  of  benefit  in  noting  the  successive  phases  of  any  mind 
which  was  always  pressing  forward,  equally  ready  to 
learn  and  to  unlearn  either  from  its  own  thoughts  or  from 
those  of  others.     But  a  motive  which  weighs  more  with  me 

15  than  either  of  these,  is  a  desire  to  make  acknowledgment 
of  the  debts  which  my  intellectual  and  moral  development 
owes  to  other  persons ;  some  of  them  of  recognized  eminence, 
others  less  known  than  they  deserve  to  be,  and  the  one  to 
whom  most  of  all  is  due,  one  whom  the  world  had  no 

20  opportunity  of  knowing.  The  reader  whom  these  things 
do  not  interest,  has  only  himself  to  blame  if  he  reads 
farther,  and  I  do  not  desire  any  other  indulgence  from 
him  than  that  of  bearing  in  mind,  that  for  him  these 
pages  were  not  written. 

25  I  was  born  in  London,  on  the  20th  of  May,  1806,  and 
was  the  eldest  son  of  James  Mill,  the  author  of  the  History 
of  British  India.  My  father,  the  son  of  a  petty  tradesman 
and  (I  believe)  small  farmer,  at  Northwater  Bridge,  in 
the  county  of  Angus,  was,  when  a  boy,  recommended  by 

30  his  abilities  to  the  notice  of  Sir  John  Stuart,  of  Fetter- 
cairn,  one  of  the  Barons  of  the  Exchequer  in  Scotland,  and 
was,  in  consequence,  sent  to  the  University  of  Edinburgh, 
at  the  expense  of  a  fund  established  by  Lady  Jane  Stuart 
(the  wife  of  Sir  John  Stuart)  and  some  other  ladies  for 


96  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

educating  young  men  for  the  Scottish  Church.  He  there 
went  through  the  usual  course  of  study,  and  was  licensed 
as  a  preacher,  but  never  followed  the  profession;  having 
satisfied  himself  that  he  could  not  believe  the  doctrines 
of  that  or  any  other  church.  For  a  few  years  he  was  a 
private  tutor  in  various  families  in  Scotland,  among  others 
that  of  the  Marquis  of  Tweeddale,  but  ended  by  taking  up 
his  residence  in  London  and  devoting  himself  to  author- 
ship. Nor  had  he  any  other  means  of  support  until  1819, 
when  he  obtained  an  appointment  in  the  India  House. 
In  this  period  of  my  father's  life  there  are  two  things 
which  it  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  with:  one  of  them 
unfortunately  a  very  common  circumstance,  the  other  a 
most  uncommon  one.  The  first  is,  that  in  his  position, 
with  no  resource  but  the  precarious  one  of  writing  in 
periodicals,  he  married  and  had  a  large  family;  conduct 
than  which  nothing  could  be  more  opposed,  both  as  a 
matter  of  good  sense  and  of  duty,  to  the  opinions  which, 
at  least  at  a  later  period  of  life,  he  strenuously  upheld. 
The  other  circumstance,  is  the  extraordinary  energy 
which  was  required  to  lead  the  life  he  led,  with  the  dis- 
advantages under  which  he  labored  from  the  first,  and  with 
those  which  he  brought  upon  himself  by  his  marriage. 
It  would  have  been  no  small  thing,  had  he  done  no  more 
than  to  support  himself  and  his  family  during  so  many 
years  by  writing,  without  ever  being  in  debt,  or  in  any 
pecuniary  difficulty;  holding,  as  he  did,  opinions,  both 
in  politics  and  in  religion,  which  were  more  odious  to  all 
persons  of  influence,  and  to  the  common  run  of  prosperous 
Englishmen  in  that  generation  than  either  before  or  since; 
and  being  not  only  a  man  whom  nothing  would  have  in- 
duced to  write  against  his  convictions,  but  one  who  in- 
variably threw  into  everything  he  wrote,  as  much  of  his 
convictions  as  he  thought  the  circumstances  would  in  any 


EXPOSITION  97 

way  permit:  being,  it  must  also  be  said,  one  who  never 
did  anything  neghgently;  never  undertook  any  task,  literary 
or  other,  on  which  he  did  not  conscientiously  bestow  all 
the  labor  necessary  for  performing  it  adequately.  But 
5  he,  with  these  burdens  on  him,  planned,  commenced,  and 
completed,  the  History  of  India  \  and  this  in  the  course  of 
about  ten  years,  a  shorter  time  than  has  been  occupied 
(even  by  writers  who  had  no  other  employment)  in  the 
production  of  almost  any  other  historical  work  of  equal 

10  bulk,  and  of  anything  approaching  to  the  same  amount 
of  reading  and  research.  And  to  this  is  to  be  added,  that 
during  the  whole  period,  a  considerable  part  of  almost 
every  day  was  employed  in  the  instruction  of  his  children, 
in  the  case  of  one  of  whom,  myself,  he  exerted  an  amount 

15  of  labor,  care,  and  perseverance  rarely,  if  ever,  employed 
for  a  similar  purpose,  in  endeavoring  to  give,  according  to 
his  own  conception,  the  highest  order  of  intellectual  educa- 
tion. 

A  man  who,  in  his  own  practice,  so  vigorously  acted 

20  up  to  the  principle  of  losing  no  time,  was  likely  to  adhere 
to  the  same  rule  in  the  instruction  of  his  pupil.  I  have 
no  remembrance  of  the  time  when  I  began  to  learn  Greek, 
I  have  been  told  that  it  was  when  I  was  three  years  old. 
My  earliest  recollection  on  the  subject,  is  that  of  com- 

25  mitting  to  memory  what  my  father  termed  vocables,  being 
lists  of  common  Greek  words,  with  their  signification  in 
English,  which  he  wrote  out  for  me  on  cards.  Of  gram- 
mar, until  some  years  later,  I  learned  no  more  than  the 
inflexions  of  the  nouns  and  verbs,  but,  after  a  course  of 

30  vocables,  proceeded  at  once  to  translation;  and  I  faintly 
remember  going  through  ^sojp's  Fables,  the  first  Greek 
book  which  I  read.  The  Anabasis,  which  I  remember 
better,  was  the  second.  I  learned  no  Latin  until  my 
eighth  year.     At  that  time  I  had  read,  under  my  father's 


98  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

tuition,  a  number  of  Greek  prose  authors,  among  whom 
I  remember  the  whole  of  Herodotus,  and  of  Xenophon's 
Cyropcedia  and  Memorials  of  Socrates;  some  of  the  Hves 
of  the  philosophers  by  Diogenes  Laertius;  part  of  Lucian, 
and  Isocrates  ad  Demonicum  and  Ad  Nicoclem.  I  also 
read,  in  1813,  the  first  six  dialogues  (in  the  common 
arrangement)  of  Plato,  from  the  Euthyphron  to  the 
Theoctetus  inclusive:  which  last  dialogue,  I  venture  to 
think,  would  have  been  better  omitted,  as  it  was  totally 
impossible  I  should  understand  it.  But  my  father,  in  all 
his  teaching,  demanded  of  me  not  only  the  utmost  that  I 
could  do,  but  much  that  I  could  by  no  possibility  have 
done.  What  he  was  himself  willing  to  undergo  for  the 
sake  of  my  instruction,  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that  I 
went  through  the  whole  process  of  preparing  my  Greek 
lessons  in  the  same  room  and  at  the  same  table  at  which 
he  was  writing:  and  as  in  those  days  Greek  and  English 
lexicons  were  not,  and  I  could  make  no  more  use  of  a 
Greek  and  Latin  lexicon  than  could  be  made  without 
having  yet  begun  to  learn  Latin,  I  was  forced  to  have 
recourse  to  him  for  the  meaning  of  every  word  which  I 
did  not  know.  This  incessant  interruption,  he,  one  of 
the  most  impatient  of  men,  submitted  to,  and  wrote  under 
that  interruption  several  volumes  of  his  History  and  all 
else  that  he  had  to  write  during  those  years. 

The  only  thing  besides  Greek,  that  I  learned  as  a  lesson 
in  this  part  of  ray  childhood,  was  arithmetic:  this  also  my 
father  taught  me:  it  was  the  task  of  the  evenings,  and  I 
well  remember  its  disagreeableness.  But  the  lessons 
were  only  a  part  of  the  daily  instruction  I  received.  Much 
of  it  consisted  in  the  books  I  read  by  myself,  and  my 
father's  discourses  to  me,  chiefly  during  our  walks.  From 
1810  to  the  end  of  1813  we  were  living  in  Newington 
Green,  then  an  almost  rustic  neighborhood.     My  father's 


EXPOSITION  99 

health  required  considerable  and  constant  exercise,  and 
he  walked  habitually  before  breakfast,  generally  in  the 
green  lanes  toward  Hornsey.  In  these  walks  I  always 
accompanied  him,  and  with  my  earliest  recollections  of 
5  green  fields  and  wild  flowers,  is  mingled  that  of  the  account 
I  gave  him  daily  of  what  I  had  read  the  day  before.  To 
the  best  of  my  remembrance,  this  was  a  voluntary  rather 
than  a  prescribed  exercise.  I  made  notes  on  slips  of 
paper  while  reading,  and  from  these  in  the  morning  walks, 

10  I  told  the  story  to  him;  for  the  books  were  chiefly  histories, 
of  which  I  read  in  this  manner  a  great  number:  Robertson's 
histories,  Hume,  Gibbon;  but  my  greatest  delight,  then 
and  for  long  afterward,  was  Watson's  Philip  the  Second 
and  Third.     The  heroic  defence  of  the  Knights  of  Malta 

15  against  the  Turks,  and  of  the  revolted  provinces  of  the 
Netherlands  against  Spain,  excited  in  me  an  intense  and 
lasting  interest.  Next  to  Watson,  my  favorite  historical 
reading  was  Hooke's  History  of  Rome.  Of  Greece  I  had 
seen  at  that  time  no  regular  history,  except  school  abridge- 

20  ments  and  the  last  two  or  three  volumes  of  a  translation 
of  Rollin's  Ancient  History,  beginning  with  Philip  of 
Macedon.  But  I  read  with  great  delight  Langhorne's 
translation  of  Plutarch.  In  English  history,  beyond  the 
time   at   which   Hume   leaves   off,    I   remember   reading 

25  Burnet's  History  of  his  Own  Time,  though  I  cared  little 
for  anything  in  it  except  the  wars  and  battles;  and  the 
historical  part  of  the  Annual  Register,  from  the  beginning 
to  about  1788,  where  the  volumes  my  father  borrowc  1 
for  me  from  Mr.  Bentham  left  off.     I  felt  a  lively  intcre  ^t 

30  in  Frederic  of  Prussia  during  his  difficulties,  and  in  Paoli, 
the  Corsican  patriot;  but  when  I  came  to  the  American 
war,  I  took  my  part,  like  a  child  as  I  was  (until  set  right 
by  my  father),  on  the  wrong  side,  because  it  was  called 
the  English  side.     In  these  frequent  talks  about  the  books 


100  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

I  read,  he  used,  as  opportunity  offered,  to  give  me  ex- 
planations and  ideas  respecting  civilization,  government, 
morality,  mental  cultivation,  which  he  required  me  after- 
ward to  restate  to  him  in  my  own  words.  He  also  made 
me  read,  and  give  him  a  verbal  account  of,  many  books  5 
which  would  not  have  interested  me  sufficiently  to  induce 
me  to  read  them  of  myself:  among  others,  Millar's  His- 
torical View  of  the  English  Government,  a  book  of  great 
merit  for  its  time,  and  which  he  highly  valued,  Mosheim's 
Ecclesiastical  History,  McCrie's  Life  of  John  Knox,  and  10 
even  Sewell  and  Rutty's  Histories  of  the  Quakers.  He 
was  fond  of  putting  into  my  hands  books  which  exhibited 
men  of  energy  and  resource  in  unusual  circumstances, 
struggling  against  difficulties  and  overcoming  them:  of 
which  works  I  remember  Beaver's  African  Memoranda,  15 
and  Collin's  Account  of  tJie  First  Settlement  of  New 
South  Wales.  Two  books  which  I  never  wearied  of  reading 
were  Anson's  Voyages,  so  delightful  to  most  young  persons, 
and  a  collection  (Hawkesworth's  I  believe)  of  Voyages 
round  the  World,  in  four  volumes  beginning  with  Drake  20 
and  ending  with  Cook  and  Bougainville.  Of  children's 
books,  any  more  than  of  playthings,  I  had  scarcely  any, 
except  an  occasional  gift  from  a  relation  or  acquaintance: 
among  those  I  had,  Robinson  Crusoe  was  preeminent,  and 
continued  to  delight  me  tlu-oughout  all  my  boyhood.  It  25 
was  no  part,  however,  of  my  father's  system  to  exclude 
books  of  amusement,  though  he  allowed  them  very 
sparingly.  Of  such  books  he  possessed  at  that  time 
next  to  none,  but  he  borrowed  several  for  me;  those  which  I 
remember  are  the  Arabian  Nights,  Cazotte's  Arabian  30 
Tales,  Don  Quixote,  Miss  Edgeworth's  Popular  Tales, 
and  a  book  of  some  reputation  in  its  day,  Brooke's  Fool 
of  Quality. 

In   my   eighth  year  I  commenced  learning  Latin,  in 


EXPOSITION  101 

conjunction  with  a  younger  sister,  to  whom  I  taught  it  as 
I  went  on,  and  who  afterward  repeated  the  lessons  to  my 
father :  and  from  this  time,  other  sisters  and  brothers  being 
successively  added  as  pupils,  a  considerable  part  of  my 
5  day's  work  consisted  of  this  preparatory  teaching.  It 
was  a  part  which  I  greatly  disliked;  the  more  so,  as  I 
was  held  responsible  for  the  lessons  of  my  pupils,  in  almost 
as  full  a  sense  as  for  my  own:  I,  however,  derived  from 
this  discipline  the  great  advantage  of  learning  more  thor- 

10  oughly  and  retaining  more  lastingly  the  things  which  I 
was  set  to  teach:  perhaps,  too,  the  practice  it  afforded  in 
explaining  difficulties  to  others  may  even  at  that  age  have 
been  useful.  In  other  respects,  the  experience  of  my 
boyhood  is  not  favorable  to  the  plan  of  teaching  children 

15  by  means  of  one  another.  The  teaching,  I  am  sure,  is 
very  inefficient  as  teaching,  and  I  well  know  that  the 
relation  between  teacher  and  taught  is  not  a  good  moral 
discipline  to  either.  I  went  in  this  manner  through  the 
Latin   grammar,    and   a    considerable   part   of   Cornelius 

20  Nepos  and  Ccesar's  Commentaries,  but  afterward  added 
to  the  superintendence  of  these  lessons,  much  longer  ones 
of  my  own. 

In  the  same  year  in  which  I  began  Latin,  I  made  my 
first  commencement  in  the  Greek  poets  with  the  Iliad. 

25  After  I  had  made  some  progress  in  this,  my  father  put 
Pope's  translation  into  my  hands.  It  was  the  first  English 
verse  I  had  cared  to  read,  and  it  became  one  of  the  books 
in  which  for  many  years  I  most  delighted :  I  think  I  must 
have   read   it   from   twenty   to   thirty   times   through.     I 

30  should  not  have  thought  it  worth  while  to  mention  a  taste 
apparently  so  natural  to  boyhood,  if  I  had  not,  as  I  think, 
observed  that  the  keen  enjoyment  of  this  brilliant  specimen 
of  narrative  and  versification  is  not  so  universal  with 
boys,  as  I  should  have  exj)ected  both  a  priori  and  from  my 


102  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

individual  experience.  Soon  after  this  time  I  commenced 
Euclid,  and  somewhat  later,  algebra,  still  under  my 
father's  tuition. 

From  my  eighth  to  my  twelfth  year,  the  Latin  books 
which  I  remember  reading  were,  the  Bucolics  of  Virgil,  5 
and  the  first  six  books  of  the  /Eneid;  all  Horace,  except 
the  Epodes;  the  Fables  of  Phaedrus;  the  first  five  books 
of  Livy  (to  which  from  my  love  of  the  subject  I  voluntarily 
added,  in  my  hours  of  leisure,  the  remainder  of  the  first 
decade);  all  Sallust;  a  considerable  part  of  Ovid's  Meta-  l( 
morphoses;  some  plays  of  Terence;  two  or  three  books  of 
Lucretius;  several  of  the  Orations  of  Cicero,  and  of  his 
writings  on  oratory;  also  his  letters  to  Atticus,  my  father 
taking  the  trouble  to  translate  to  me  from  the  French  the 
historical  explanations  in  Mingault's  notes.  In  Greek  I  U 
read  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  through;  one  or  two  plays  of 
Sophocles,  Euripides,  and  Aristophanes,  though  by  these  I 
profited  little;  all  Thucydides;  the  Hellenics  of  Xenophon; 
a  great  part  of  Demosthenes,  iEschines,  and  Lysfis; 
Theocritus;  Anacreon;  part  of  the  Anthology;  a  little  of  2C 
Dionysius;  several  books  of  Polybius;  and  lastly  Aristotle's 
Rhetoric,  which,  as  the  first  expressly  scientific  treatise  on 
any  moral  or  psychological  subject  which  I  had  read,  and 
containing  many  of  the  best  observations  of  the  ancients 
on  human  nature  and  life,  my  father  made  me  study  )25 
with  peculiar  care,  and  throw  the  matter  of  it  into  synoptic 
tables.  During  the  same  years  I  learned  elementary 
geometry  and  algebra  thoroughly,  the  differential  calculus, 
and  other  portions  of  the  higher  mathematics  far  from 
thoroughly;  for  my  father,  not  having  kept  up  this  part  30 
of  his  early  acquired  knowledge,  could  not  spare  time  to 
qualify  himself  for  removing  my  difficulties,  and  left  me 
to  deal  with  them,  with  little  other  aid  than  that  of  books: 
while  I  was  continually  incurring  his  displeasure  by  my 


EXPOSITION  103 

inability  to  solve  difficult  problems  for  which  he  did  not 
see  that  I  had  not  the  necessary  previous  knowledge. 

As  to  my  private  reading,  I  can  only  speak  of  what  I 
remember.  History  continued  to  be  my  strongest  pre- 
5  dilection,  and  most  of  all  ancient  history.  Mitford's 
Greece  I  read  continually;  my  father  had  put  me  on  my 
guard  against  the  Tory  prejudices  of  this  writer,  and  his 
perversions  of  facts  for  the  whitewashing  of  despots,  and 
blackening  of  popular  institutions.     These  points  he  dis- 

10  coursed  on,  exemplifying  them  from  the  Greek  orators 
and  historians,  with  such  effect  that  in  reading  Mitford 
my  sympathies  were  always  on  the  contrary  side  to  those 
of  the  author,  and  I  could,  to  some  extent,  have  argued 
the  point  against  him:  yet  this  did  not  diminish  the  ever 

15  new  pleasure  with  which  I  read  the  book.  Roman  history, 
both  in  my  old  favorite,  Hooke,  and  in  Ferguson,  continued 
to  delight  me.  A  book  which,  in  spite  of  what  is  called 
the  dryness  of  its  style,  I  took  great  pleasure  in,  was  the 
Ancient  Universal  History,  through  the  incessant  reading 

20  of  which,  I  had  my  head  full  of  historical  details  concerning 
the  obscurest  ancient  people,  while  about  modern  history, 
except  detached  passages,  such  as  the  Dutch  War  of 
Independence,  I  knew  and  cared  comparatively  little. 
A  voluntary  exercise,  to  which  throughout  my  boyhood 

25  I  was  much  addicted,  was  what  I  called  writing  histories. 
I  successively  composed  a  Roman  History,  picked  out  of 
Hooke;  an  Abridgment  of  the  Ancient  Universal  History; 
a  History  of  Holland,  from  my  favorite  Watson  and  from 
an  anonymous  compilation ;  and  in  my  eleventh  and  twelfth 

30  year  I  occupied  myself  with  writing  what  I  flattered  my- 
self was  something  serious.  This  was  no  less  than  a 
History  of  the  Roman  Government,  compiled  (with  the 
assistance  of  Hooke)  from  Livy  and  Dionysius :  of  which  I 
wrote  as  much  as  would  have  made  an  octavo  volume, 


104  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

extending  to  the  epoch  of  the  Licinian  Laws.  It  was,  in 
fact,  an  account  of  the  struggles  between  the  patricians 
and  plebeians,  which  now  engrossed  all  the  interest  in 
my  mind  which  I  had  previously  felt  in  the  mere  wars  and 
conquests  of  the  Romans.  I  discussed  all  the  constitutional  5 
points  as  they  arose:  though  quite  ignorant  of  Niebuhr's 
researches,  I,  by  such  lights  as  my  father  had  given  me, 
vindicated  the  Agrarian  Laws  on  the  evidence  of  Livy, 
and  upheld,  to  the  best  of  my  ability,  the  Roman  Democratic 
party.  A  few  years  later,  in  my  contempt  of  my  childish  10 
efforts,  I  destroyed  all  these  papers,  not  then  anticipating 
that  I  could  ever  feel  any  curiosity  about  my  first  attempts 
at  writing  and  reasoning.  My  father  encouraged  me  in 
this  useful  amusement,  though,  as  I  think  judiciously, 
he  never  asked  to  see  what  I  wrote;  so  that  I  did  not  feel  15 
that  in  writing  it  I  was  accountable  to  any  one,  nor  had  the 
chilling  sensation  of  being  under  a  critical  eye. 

But  though  these  exercises  in  history  were  never  a 
compulsory  lesson,  there  was  another  kind  of  composition 
which  was  so,  namely,  writing  verses,  and  it  was  one  of  20 
the  most  disagreeable  of  my  tasks.  Greek  and  Latin 
verses  I  did  not  write,  nor  learned  the  prosody  of  these 
languages.  My  father,  thinking  this  not  worth  the  time 
it  required,  contented  himself  with  making  me  read  aloud 
to  him,  and  correcting  false  quantities.  I  never  composed  25 
at  all  in  Greek,  even  in  prose,  and  but  little  in  Latin. 
Not  that  my  father  could  be  indifferent  to  the  value  of 
this  practice,  in  giving  a  thorough  knowledge  of  these 
languages,  but  because  there  really  was  not  time  for  it. 
The  verses  I  was  required  to  write  were  English. '  When  I  30 
first  read  Pope's  Homer,  I  ambitiously  attempted  to 
compose  something  of  the  same  kind,  and  achieved  as 
much  as  one  book  of  a  continuation  of  the  Iliad.  There, 
probably,    the   spontaneous   promptings   of   my   poetical 


EXPOSITION  105 

ambition  would  have  stopped;  but  the  exercise,  begun 
from  choice,  was  continued  by  command.  Conformably 
to  my  father's  usual  practice  of  explaining  to  me,  as  far 
as  possible,  the  reasons  for  what  he  required  me  to  do, 
5  he  gave  me,  for  this,  as  I  well  remember,  two  reasons 
highly  characteristic  of  him:  one  was,  that  some  things 
could  be  expressed  better  and  more  forcibly  in  verse  than 
in  prose:  this,  he  said,  was  a  real  advantage.  The  other 
was,  that  people  in  general  attached  more  value  to  verse 

10  than  it  deserved,  and  the  power  of  writing  it,  was,  on  this 
account,  worth  acquiring.  He  generally  left  me  to  choose 
my  own  subjects,  which,  as  far  as  I  remember,  were 
mostly  addresses  to  some  mythological  personage  or 
allegorical   abstraction;   but  he  made  me  translate  into 

15  English  verse  many  of  Horace's  shorter  poems:  I  also 
remember  his  giving  me  Thomson's  Winter  to  read,  and 
afterward  making  me  attempt  (without  book)  to  write 
something  myself  on  the  same  subject.  The  verses  I 
wrote  were,  of  course,  the  merest  rubbish,  nor  did  I  ever 

20  attain  any  facility  of  versification,  but  the  practice  may 
have  been  useful  in  making  it  easier  for  me,  at  a  later 
period,  to  acquire  readiness  of  expression.*  I  had  read, 
up  to  this  time,  very  little  English  poetry.  Shakespeare 
my  father  had  put  into  my  hands,  chiefly  for  the  sake  of 

25  the  historical  plays,  from  which,  however,  I  went  on  to  the 
others.  My  father  never  was  a  great  admirer  of  Shake- 
speare, the  English  idolatry  of  whom  he  usied  to  attack 
with  some  severity.  He  cared  little  for  any  English  poetry 
except  Milton  (for  whom  he  had  the  highest  admiration), 

30   Goldsmith,  Burns,  and  Gray's  Bard,  which  he  preferred 

*In  a  subsequent  stage  of  boyhood,  when  these  exercises  had  ceased 
to  be  compulsory,  Hke  most  youthful  writers  I  wrote  tragedies;  under 
the  inspiration  not  so  much  of  Shakespeare  as  of  Joanna  Baillie,  whose 
Constantine  Faleologus  in  particular  appeared  to  me  one  of  the  most 
glorious  of  human  compositions.  I  still  think  it  one  of  the  best  dramas 
of  the  last  two  centuries. 


106  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

to  his  Elegy:  perhaps  I  may  add  Cowper  and  Beattie. 
He  had  some  value  for  Spenser,  and  I  remember  his  read- 
ing to  me  (unUke  his  usual  practice  of  making  me  read 
to  him) ,  the  first  book  of  the  Fairie  Queene;  but  I  took  little 
pleasure  in  it.  The  poetry  of  the  present  century  he  saw  5 
scarcely  any  merit  in,  and  I  hardly  became  acquainted 
with  any  of  it  till  I  was  grown  up  to  manhood,  except  the 
metrical  romances  of  Walter  Scott,  which  I  read  at  his 
recommendation  and  was  intensely  delighted  with;  as  I 
always  was  with  animated  narrative.  Dryden's  poems  10 
were  among  my  father's  books,  and  many  of  these  he  made 
me  read,  but  I  never  cared  for  any  of  them  except  Alex- 
ander's Feast,  which,  as  well  as  many  of  the  songs  of 
Walter  Scott,  I  used  to  sing  internally,  to  a  music  of  my 
own:  to  some  of  the* latter,  indeed,  I  went  so  far  as  to  15 
compose  airs,  which  I  still  remember.  Cowper's  short 
poems  I  read  with  some  pleasure,  but  never  got  far  into 
the  longer  ones;  and  nothing  in  the  two  volumes  interested 
me  like  the  prose  account  of  his  three  hares.  In  my 
thirteenth  year  I  met  with  Campbell's  poems,  among  which  20 
Lochiely  Hohenlinden,  The  Exile  of  Erin,  and  some  others, 
gave  me  sensations  I  had  never  before  experienced  from 
poetry.  Here,  too,  I  made  nothing  of  the  longer  poems, 
except  the  striking  opening  of  Gertrude  of  Wyoming, 
which  long  kept  its  place  in  my  feelings  as  the  perfection  25 
of  pathos. 

During  this  part  of  my  childhood,  one  of  my  greatest 
amusements  was  experimental  science;  in  the  theoretical, 
however,  not  the  practical  sense  of  the  word;  not  trying 
experiments — a  kind  of  discipline  which  I  have  often  30 
regretted  not  having  had — nor  even  seeing,  but  merely 
reading  about  them.  I  never  remember  being  so  wrapped 
up  in  any  book,  as  I  was  in  Joyce's  Scientific  Dialogues', 
and  I  was  rather  recalcitrant  to  my  father's  criticisms  of 


EXPOSITION  107 

the  bad  reasoning  respecting  the  first  principles  of  physics, 
which  abounds  in  the  early  part  of  that  work.  I  devoured 
treatises  on  chemistry,  especially  that  of  my  father's  early 
friend  and  schoolfellow,  Dr.  Thomson,  for  years  before  I 
5  attended  a  lecture  or  saw  an  experiment. 

From  about  the  age  of  twelve,  I  entered  into  another  and 
more  advanced  stage  in  my  course  of  instruction ;  in  which 
the  main  object  was  no  longer  the  aids  and  appliances  of 
thought,  but  the  thoughts  themselves. 

10  During  this  time,  the  Latin  and  Greek  books  which  I 
continued  to  read  with  my  father  were  chiefly  such  as 
were  worth  studying,  not  for  the  language  merely,  but 
also  for  the  thoughts.  This  included  much  of  the  orators, 
and   especially   Demosthenes,    some   of   whose   principal 

15  orations  I  read  several  times  over,  and  wrote  out  by 
way  of  exercise,  a  full  analysis  of  them.  My  father's 
comments  on  these  orations  when  I  read  them  to  him  were 
very  instructive  to  me.  He  not  only  drew  my  attention  to 
the  insight  they  afforded  into  Athenian  institutions,  and 

20  the  principles  of  legislation  and  government  which  they 
often  illustrated,  but  pointed  out  the  skill  and  art  of  the 
orator — how  everything  important  to  his  purpose  was  sai<l 
at  the  exact  moment  when  he  had  brought  the  minds  of  his 
audience  into  the  state  most  fitted  to  receive  it;  how  he 

25  made  steal  into  their  minds,  gradually  and  by  insinuatior 
thoughts  which,   if  expressed  in   a  more  direct  manii 
would  have  roused  their  opposition.     Most  of  these  r 
flections  were  beyond  my  capacity  of  full  comprehensi 
at  the  time;  but  they  left  seed  behind,  which  germinated  ; 

30  due  season.     At  this  time  I  also  read  the  whole  of  Tacitii 
Juvenal,  and  Quintilian.     The  latter,  owing  to  his  obscui  r 
style  and  to  the  scholastic  details  of  which  many  parts  of 
his  treatise  are  made  up,  is  little  read,  and  seldom  suf- 
ficiently appreciated.     His  book  is  a  kind  of  encyclopedia 


108  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

of  the  thoughts  of  the  ancients  on  the  whole  field  of  educa- 
tion and  culture;  and  I  have  retained  through  life  many 
valuable  ideas  which  I  can  distinctly  trace  to  my  reading  of 
him,  even  at  that  early  age.  It  was  at  this  period  that 
I  read,  for  the  first  time,  some  of  the  most  important  5 
dialogues  of  Plato,  in  particular  the  Gorgias,  the  Protagoras 
and  the  Republic.  There  is  no  author  to  whom  my 
father  thought  himself  more  indebted  for  his  own  mental 
culture,  than  Plato,  or  whom  he  more  frequently  recom- 
mended to  young  students.  10 


At  this  point  concluded  what  can  properly  be  called  my 
lessons:  when  I  was  about  fourteen  I  left  England  for  15 
more  than  a  year;  and  after  my  return,  though  my  studies 
went  on  under  my  father's  general  direction,  he  was  no 
longer  my  schoolmaster.  I  shall  therefore  pause  here, 
and  turn  back  to  matters  of  a  more  general  nature  con- 
nected with  the  part  of  my  life  and  education  included  in  20 
the  preceding  reminiscences. 

Suggestions:  Compare  Mill's  paragraphs  with  Bryce's  (a) 
as  to  length,  (b)  as  to  construction.  What  two  character- 
istics do  you  notice,  first  of  all,  about  Mill's  sentences  ?  What 
is  the  effect  of  these  upon  his  style?  What  is  the  range  of 
Mill's  vocabulary  ?  What  kinds  of  words  does  he  use,  chiefly  ? 
How  do  they  contribute  to  the  general  impression  of  his   style? 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Write  an  opinion  of  James  Mill's  system  of  education  for 
his  son. 

Write  an  account  of  your  own  early  education. 

Compare  Mill's  training,  at  three  important  points,  with 
that  of  an  American  child  from  the  kindergarten  to  the  high 
school. 


EXPOSITION  109 

AN  ADDRESS  ON  UNIVERSITY  EDUCATION* 
Thomas  Henry  HuxLEY-f- 

THE  actual  work  of  the  University  founded  in  this 
city  by  the  well-considered  munificence  of  Johns 
Hopkins  commences  to-morrow,  and  among  the  many 
marks  of  confidence  and  good-will  which  have  been  be- 
5  stowed  upon  me  in  the  United  States,  there  is  none  which 
I  value  more  highly  than  that  conferred  by  the  authorities 
of  the  University  when  they  invited  me  to  deliver  an  address 
on  such  an  occasion. 

For  the  event  which  has  brought  us  together  is,   in 

10  many  respects,  unique.  A  vast  property  is  handed  over 
to  an  administrative  body,  hampered  by  no  conditions 
save  these:  That  the  principal  shall  not  be  employed 
in  building;  that  the  funds  shall  be  appropriated,  in  equal 
proportions,  to  the  promotion  of  natural  knowledge  and 

15  to  the  alleviation  of  the  bodily  sufferings  of  mankind;  and, 
finally,  that  neither  political  nor  ecclesiastical  sectarianism 
shall  be  permitted  to  disturb  the  impartial  distribution  of 
the  testator's  benefactions. 

In  my  experience  of  life  a  truth  which  sounds  very 

20  much  like  a  paradox  has  often  asserted  itself;  namely, 
that  a  man's  worst  diflftculties  begin  when  he  is  able  to  do 
as  he  likes.  So  long  as  a  man  is  struggling  with  obstacles 
he  has  an  excuse  for  failure  or  shortcoming;  but  when 
fortune  removes  them  all  and  gives  him  the  power  of  doing 

25  as  he  thinks  best,  then  comes  the  time  of  trial.  There 
is  but  one  right,  and  the  possibilities  of  wrong  are  infinite. 
I  doubt  not  that  the  trustees  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  Uni- 

*Delivered  at  the  formal  opening  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  University  at 
Baltimore,  U.  S.,  September  12,  1876. 
^American  Addresses.    Reprinted  by  permission  of  D.  Appleton  &  Co. 


110  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

versity  felt  the  full  force  of  this  truth  when  they  entered 
on  the  administration  of  their  trust  a  year  and  a  half  ago; 
and  I  can  but  admire  the  activity  and  resolution  which 
have  enabled  them,  aided  by  the  able  president  whom  they 
have  selected,  to  lay  down  the  great  outlines  of  their  plan,  5 
and  carry  it  thus  far  into  execution.  It  is  impossible  to 
study  that  plan  without  perceiving  that  great  care,  fore- 
thought, and  sagacity,  have  been  bestowed  upon  it,  and 
that  it  demands  the  most  respectful  consideration.  I 
have  been  endeavoring  to  ascertain  how  far  the  principles  10 
which  underlie  it  are  in  accordance  with  those  which  have 
been  established  in  my  own  mind  by  much  and  long- 
continued  thought  upon  educational  questions.  Permit 
me  to  place  before  you  the  result  of  my  reflections. 

Under  one  aspect  a  university  is  a  particular  kind  of  edu-   15 
cational  institution,  and  the  views  which  we  may  take  of  the 
proper  nature  of  a  university  are  corollaries  from  those 
which  we  hold  respecting  education  in  general.     I  think  it 
must  be  admitted  that  the  school  should  prepare  for  the 
university,  and  that  the  university  should  crown  the  edifice,   20 
the  foundations  of  which  are  laid  in  the  school.     University 
education  should  not  be  something  distinct  from  elementary 
education,    but    should    be   the    natural    outgrowth    and 
development   of  the   latter.     Now   I   have   a  very   clear 
conviction  as  to  what  elementary  education  ought  to  be;  25 
what  it  really  may  be,  when  properly  organized ;  and  what 
I  think  it  will  be,  before  many  years  have  passed  over 
our  heads,  in  England  and  in  America.     Such  education 
should  enable  an  average  boy  of  fifteen  or  sixteen  to  read 
and  write  his  own  language  with  ease  and  accuracy,  and  30 
with  a  sense  of  literary  excellence  derived  from  the  study 
of  our  classic  writers :  to  have  a  general  acquaintance  with 
the  history  of  his  own  country  and  with  the  great  laws  of 
social  existence;  to  have  acquired  the  rudiments  of  the  phys- 


EXPOSITION  111 

ical  and  psychological  sciences,  and  a  fair  knowledge  of  ele- 
mentary arithmetic  and  geometry.  He  should  have  obtained 
an  acquaintance  with  logic  rather  by  example  than  by  pre- 
cept; while  the  acquirement  of  the  elements  of  music  and 
5  drawing  should  have  been  pleasure  rather  than  work. 

It  may  sound  strange  to  many  ears  if  I  venture  to  main- 
tain the  proposition  that  a  young  person,  educated  thus 
far,  has  had  a  liberal,  though  perhaps  not  a  full,  education. 
But  it  seems  to  me  that  such  training  as  that  to  which  I 

10  have  referred  may  be  termed  liberal,  in  both  the  senses  in 
which  that  word  is  employed,  with  perfect  accuracy. 
In  the  first  place,  it  is  liberal  in  breadth.  It  extends  over 
the  whole  ground  of  things  to  be  known  and  of  faculties  to 
be  trained,  and  it  gives  equal  importance  to  the  two  great 

15  sides  of  human  activity — art  and  science.  In  the  second 
place,  it  is  liberal  in  the  sense  of  being  an  education  fitted 
for  free  men;  for  men  to  whom  every  career  is  open,  and 
from  whom  their  country  may  demand  that  they  should  be 
fitted  to  perform  the  duties  of  any  career.     I  cannot  too 

20  strongly  impress  upon  you  the  fact  that,  with  such  a  primary 
education  as  this,  and  with  no  more  than  is  to  be  obtained 
by  building  strictly  upon  its  lines,  a  man  of  abihty  may 
become  a  great  writer  or  speaker,  a  statesman,  a  lawyer, 
a  man  of  science,  painter,  sculptor,  architect,  or  musician. 

25  That  even  development  of  all  a  man's  faculties,  which  is 
what  properly  constitutes  culture,  may  be  effected  by  such  an 
education,  while  it  opens  the  way  for  the  indefinite  strength- 
ening of  any  special  capabilities  with  which  he  may  be 
gifted. 

30  In  a  country  like  this,  where  most  men  have  to  carve 
out  their  own  fortunes  and  devote  themselves  early  to  the 
practical  affairs  of  life,  comparatively  few  can  hope  to 
pursue  their  studies  up  to,  still  less  beyond,  the  age  of 
manhood.     But  it  is  of  vital  importance  to  the  welfare  of 


112  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

the  community  that  those  who  are  relieved  from  the  need 
of  making  a  livehhood,  and  still  more,  those  who  are 
stirred  by  the  divine  impulses  of  intellectual  thirst  or 
artistic  genius,  should  be  enabled  to  devote  themselves 
to  the  higher  service  of  their  kind,  as  centers  of  intelligence,  5 
interpreters  of  nature,  or  creators  of  new  forms  of  beauty. 
And  it  is  the  function  of  a  university  to  furnish  such  men 
with  the  means  of  becoming  that  which  it  is  their  privilege 
and  duty  to  be.  To  this  end  the  university  need  cover 
no  ground  foreign  to  that  occupied  by  the  elementary  10 
school.  Indeed  it  cannot;  for  the  elementary  instruction 
which  I  have  referred  to  embraces  all  the  kinds  of  real 
knowledge  and  mental  activity  possible  to  man.  The 
university  can  add  no  new  departments  of  knowledge,  can 
offer  no  new  fields  of  mental  activity;  but  what  it  can  do  is  15 
to  intensify  and  specialize  the  instruction  in  each  depart- 
ment. Thus  literature  and  philology,  represented  in  the 
elementary  school  by  English  alone,  in  the  university  will 
extend  over  the  ancient  and  modern  languages.  History, 
which,  like  charity,  best  begins  at  home,  but,  like  charity,  20 
should  not  end  there,  will  ramify  into  anthropology, 
archaeology,  political  history,  and  geography,  with  the 
history  of  the  growth  of  the  human  mind  and  of  its  pro- 
ducts in  the  shape  of  philosophy,  science,  and  art.  And 
the  university  will  present  to  the  student  libraries,  museums  25 
of  antiquities,  collections  of  coins,  and  the  like,  which 
will  efficiently  subserve  these  studies.  Instruction  in  the 
elements  of  social  economy,  a  most  essential,  but  hitherto 
sadly-neglected  part  of  elementary  education,  will  develop 
in  the  university  into  political  economy,  sociology,  and  law.  30 
Physical  science  will  have  its  great  divisions  of  physical 
geography,  with  geology  and  astronomy;  physics ;  chemistry 
and  biology;  represented  not  merely  by  professors  and 
their  lectures,  but  by  laboratories,  in  which  the  students, 


EXPOSITION  113 

under  guidance  of  demonstrators,  will  work  out  facts  for 
themselves  and  come  into  that  direct  contact  with  reality 
which  constitutes  the  fundamental  distinction  of  scientific 
education.  Mathematics  will  soar  into  its  highest  regions; 
5  while  the  high  peaks  of  philosophy  may  be  scaled  by  those 
whose  aptitude  for  abstract  thought  has  been  awakened 
by  elementary  logic.  Finally,  schools  of  pictorial  and 
plastic  art,  of  architecture,  and  of  music,  will  offer  a  thorough 
(hscipline  in  the  principles  and  practice  of  art  to  those  in 

10  whom  lies  nascent  the  rare  faculty  of  esthetic  representation 
or  the  still  rarer  powers  of  creative  genius. 

The  primary  school  and  the  university  are  the  alpha  and 
omega  of  education.  Whether  institutions  intermediate 
between  these  (so-called  secondary  schools)  should  exist, 

15  appears  to  me  to  be  a  question  of  practical  convenience. 
If  such  schools  are  established,  the  important  thing  is  that 
they  should  be  true  intermediaries  between  the  primary 
school  and  the  university,  keeping  on  the  wide  track  of 
general  culture,  and  not  sacrificing  one  branch  of  know- 

20  ledge  for  another. 

Such  appear  to  me  to  be  the  broad  outlines  of  the  re- 
lations which  the  university,  regarded  as  a  place  of  educa- 
tion, ought  to  bear  to  the  school,  but  a  number  of  points 
of  detail  require  some  consideration,  however  briefly  and 

25  imperfectly  I  can  deal  with  them.  In  the  first  place,  there 
is  the  important  question  of  the  limitations  which  should  be 
fixed  to  the  entrance  into  the  university;  or,  what  qualifica- 
tions should  be  required  of  those  who  propose  to  take  advan- 
tage of  the  higher  training  offered  by  the  university.  On  the 

30  one  hand,  it  is  obviously  desirable  that  the  time  and  oppor- 
tunities of  the  university  should  not  be  wasted  in  conferring 
such  elementary  instruction  as  can  be  qbtained  elsewhere; 
while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  no  less  desirable  that  the 
higher  instruction  of  the  university  should  be  made  ac- 


114  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

cessible  to  every  one  who  can  take  advantage  of  it,  although 
he  may  not  have  been  able  to  go  through  any  very  extended 
course  of  education.  My  own  feeling  is  distinctly  against 
any  absolute  and  defined  preliminary  examination,  the 
passing  of  which  shall  be  an  essential  condition  of  admission  5 
to  the  university.  I  would  admit  to  the  university  any  one 
who  could  be  reasonably  expected  to  profit  by  the  instruc- 
tion offered  to  him;  and  I  should  be  inclined  on  the  whole, 
to  test  the  fitness  of  the  student,  not  by  examination  be- 
fore he  enters  the  university,  but  at  the  end  of  his  first  10 
term  of  study.  If,  on  examination  in  the  branches  of 
knowledge  to  which  he  has  devoted  himself,  he  show 
himself  deficient  in  industry  or  in  capacity,  it  will  be  best 
for  the  university  and  best  for  himself,  to  prevent  him 
from  pursuing  a  vocation  for  which  he  is  obviously  unfit.  15 
And  I  hardly  know  of  any  other  method  than  this  by  which 
his  fitness  or  unfitness  can  be  safely  ascertained,  though  no 
doubt  a  good  deal  may  be  done,  not  by  formal  cut  and 
dried  examination,  but  by  judicious  questioning,  at  the 
outset  of  his  career.  20 

Another  very  important  and  diflScult  practical  question 
is,  whether  a  definite  course  of  study  shall  be  laid  down 
for  those  who  enter  the  university;  whether  a  curriculum 
shall  be  prescribed ;  or  whether  the  student  shall  be  allowed 
to  range  at  will  among  the  subjects  which  are  open  to  25 
him.  And  this  question  is  inseparably  connected  with 
another,  namely,  the  conferring  of  degrees.  It  is  obviously 
impossible  that  any  student  should  pass  through  the  whole 
of  the  series  of  courses  of  instruction  ofi^ered  by  a  university. 
If  a  degree  is  to  be  conferred  as  a  mark  of  proficiency  in  30 
knowledge,  it  must  be  given  on  the  ground  that  the  candi- 
date is  proficient  in  a  certain  fraction  of  those  studies; 
and  then  will  arise  the  necessity  of  insuring  an  equivalency 
of  degrees,  so  that  the  course  by  which  a  degree  is  obtained 


EXPOSITION  115 

shall  mark  approximately  an  equal  amount  of  labor  and  of 
acquirements,  in  all  cases.  But  this  equivalency  can 
hardly  be  secured  in  any  other  way  than  by  prescribing  a 
series  of  definite  lines  of  study.  This  is  a  matter  which 
6  will  require  grave  consideration.  The  important  points 
to  bear  in  mind,  I  think,  are  that  there  should  not  be  too 
many  subjects  in  the  curriculum,  and  that  the  aim  should 
be  the  attainment  of  thorough  and  sound  knowledge  of 
each. 

10  One  half  of  the  Johns  Hopkins  bequest  is  devoted  to 
the  establishment  of  a  hospital,  and  it  was  the  desire  of 
the  testator  that  the  university  and  the  hospital  should 
cooperate  in  the  promotion  of  medical  education.  The 
trustees  will  unquestionably  take  the  best  advice  that  is  to 

15  be  had  as  to  the  construction  and  administration  of  the 
hospital.  In  respect  to  the  former  point,  they,  will  doubt- 
less remember  that  a  hospital  may  be  so  arranged  as  to  kill 
more  than  it  cures;  and,  in  regard  to  the  latter,  that  a 
hospital  may  spread  the  spirit  of  pauperism  among  the 

20  well-to-do,  as  well  as  relieve  the  sufferings  of  the  destitute. 
It  is  not  for  me  to  speak  on  these  topics — rather  let  me 
confine  myself  to  the  one  matter  on  which  my  experience 
as  a  student  of  medicine,  and  an  examiner  of  long  standing, 
who  has  taken  a  great  interest  in  the  subject  of  medical 

25  education,  may  entitle  me  to  a  hearing.  I  mean  the  nature 
of  medical  education  itself,  and  the  cooperation  of  the 
university  in  its  promotion. 

What   is   the  object  of  medical   education.^     It   is   to 
enable  the  practitioner,  on  the  one  hand,  to  prevent  disease 

30  by  his  knowledge  of  hygiene;  on  the  other  hand,  to  divine 
its  nature,  and  to  alleviate  or  cure  it,  by  his  knowledge  of 
pathology,  therapeutics,  and  practical  medicine.  That  is 
his  business  in  life,  and  if  he  has  not  a  thorough  and 
practical  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  health,  of  the 


116  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

causes  which  tend  to  the  estabHshment  of  disease,  of  the 
meaning  of  symptoms,  and  of  the  uses  of  medicines  and 
operative  appliances,  he  is  incompetent,  even  if  he  were  the 
best  anatomist,  or  physiologist,  or  chemist,  that  ever  took 
a  gold  medal  or  won  a  prize  certificate.  This  is  one  5 
great  truth  respecting  medical  education.  Another  is, 
that  all  practice  in  medicine  is  based  upon  theory  of  some 
sort  or  other;  and  therefore,  that  it  is  desirable  to  have 
such  theory  in  the  closest  possible  accordance  with  fact. 
The  veriest  empiric  who  gives  a  drug  in  one  case  because  10 
he  has  seen  it  do  good  in  another  of  apparently  the  same 
sort,  acts  upon  the  theory  that  similarity  of  superficial 
symptoms  means  similarity  of  lesions;  which,  by  the  way, 
is  perhaps  as  wild  an  hypothesis  as  could  be  invented.  To 
understand  the  nature  of  disease  we  must  understand  15 
health,  and  the  understanding  of  the  healthy  body  means 
the  having  a  knowledge  of  its  structure  and  of  the  way  in 
which  its  manifold  actions  are  performed,  which  is  what 
is  technically  termed  human  anatomy  and  human  phy- 
siology. The  physiologist  again  must  needs  possess  an  20 
acquaintance  with  physics  and  chemistry,  inasmuch  as 
physiology  is,  to  a  great  extent,  applied  physics  and  chemis- 
try. For  ordinary  purposes  a  limited  amount  of  such 
knowledge  is  all  that  is  needful;  but  for  the  pursuit  of  the 
higher  branches  of  physiology  no  knowledge  of  these  25 
branches  of  science  can  be  too  extensive,  or  too  profound. 
Again,  what  we  call  therapeutics,  which  has  to  do  with  the 
action  of  drugs  and  medicines  on  the  living  organism,  is, 
strictly  speaking,  a  branch  of  experimental  physiology,  and 
is  daily  receiving  a  greater  and  greater  experimental  30 
development. 

The  third  great  fact  which  is  to  be  taken  into  considera- 
tion in  dealing  with  medical  education,  is  that  the  practical 
necessities  of   life  do  not,  as  a  rule,  allow  aspirants  to 


EXPOSITION  117 

medical  practice  to  give  more  than  three,  or  it  may  be 
four  years,  to|  their  [studies.  Let  us  put  it  at  four  years, 
and  then  reflect  that,  in  the  course  of  this  time,  a  young 
man  fresh  from  school  has  to  acquaint  himself  with 
5  medicine,  surgery,  obstetrics,  therapeutics,  pathology, 
hygiene,  as  well  as  with  the  anatomy  and  the  physiology 
of  the  human  body;  and  that  his  knowledge  should  be  of 
such  a  character  that  it  can  be  relied  upon  in  any  emer- 
gency, and  always  ready  for  practical  application.     Con- 

10  sider,  in  addition,  that  the  medical  practitioner  may  be 
called  upon,  at  any  moment,  to  give  evidence  in  a  court 
of  justice  in  a  criminal  case;  and  that  it  is  therefore  well 
that  he  should  know  something  of  the  laws  of  evidence, 
and  of  what  we  call  medical  jurisprudence.     On  a  medical 

15  certificate,  a  man  may  be  taken  from  his  home  and  from 
his  business  and  confined  in  a  lunatic  asylum;  surely, 
therefore,  it  is  desirable  that  the  medical  practitioner 
should  have  some  rational  and  clear  conceptions  as  to 
the  nature   and   symptoms   of  mental   disease.     Bearing 

20  in  mind  all  these  requirements  of  medical  education,  you 
will  admit  that  the  burden  on  the  young  aspirant  for  the 
medical  profession  is  somewhat  of  the  heaviest,  and  that 
it  needs  some  care  to  prevent  his  intellectual  back  from 
being  broken. 

25  Those  who  are  acquainted  with  the  existing  systems  of 
medical  education  will  observe  that,  long  as  is  the  catalogue 
of  studies  which  I  have  enumerated,  I  have  omitted  to 
mention  several  that  enter  into  the  usual  medical  curric- 
ulum of  the  present  day.      I  have  said  not  a  word  about 

30  zoology,  comparative  anatomy,  botany,  or  materia  medica. 
Assuredly  this  is  from  no  light  estimate  of  the  value  or  im- 
portance of  such  studies  in  themselves.  It  may  be  taken 
for  granted  that  I  should  be  the  last  person  in  the  world 
to   object   to   the   teaching   of   zoology,    or   comparative 


118  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

anatomy,  in  themselves;  but  I  have  the  strongest  feeling 
that,   considering  the  number  and  the  gravity  of  those 
studies  through  which  a  medical  man  must  pass,  if  he 
is  to  be  competent  to  discharge  the  serious  duties  which 
devolve  upon  him,  subjects  which  lie  so  remote  as  these  5 
do  from  his  practical  pursuits  should  be  rigorously  ex- 
cluded.    The  young  man,  who  has  enough  to  do  in  order 
to  acquire  such  familiarity  with  the  structure  of  the  human 
body  as  will  enable  him  to  perform  the  operations  of 
surgery,  ought  not,  in  my  judgment,  to  be  occupied  with  10 
investigations  into  the  anatomy  of  crabs  and  starfishes. 
Undoubtedly  the  doctor  should  know  the  common  poison- 
ous plants  of  his  own  country  when  he  sees  them;  but  that 
knowledge  may  be  obtained  by"  a  few  hours  devoted  to 
the  examination  of  specimens  of  such  plants,  and  the  de-   15 
sirableness  of  such  knowledge  is  no  justification,  to  my 
mind,  for  spending  three  months  over  the  study  of  systemat- 
ic botany.     Again,  materia  medica,  so  far  as  it  is  a  know- 
ledge of  drugs,  is  the  business  of  the  druggist.     In  all  other 
callings  the  necessity  of  the  division  of  labor  is  fully  re-   20 
cognized  and  it  is  absurd  to  require  of  the  medical  man  that 
he  should  not  avail  himself  of  the  special  knowledge  of 
those  whose  business  it  is  to  deal  in  the  drugs  which  he 
uses.     It  is  all  very  well  that  the  physician  should  know 
that  castor  oil  comes  from  a  plant,  and  castoreum  from  25 
an  animal,  and  how  they  are  to  be  prepared;  but  for  all 
the  practical  purposes  of  his  profession  that  knowledge 
is  not  of  one  whit  more  value,  has  no  more  relevancy, 
than  the  ,  knowledge  of  how  the  steel  of  his  scalpel  is 
made.  ;J0 

All  knowledge  is  good.  It  is  impossible  to  say  that  any 
fragment  of  knowledge,  however  insignificant  or  remote 
from  one's  ordinary  pursuits,  may  not  some  day  be  turned 
to  account.     But  in  medical  education,  above  all  things. 


EXPOSITION  119 

it  is  to  be  recollected  that,  in  order  to  know  a  little  well,  one 
niiust  be  content  to  be  ignorant  of  a  great  deal. 

Let  it  not  be  supposed  that  I  am  proposing  to  narrow 
medical  education,  or,  as  the  cry  is,  to  lower  the  standard 
5  of  the  profession.  Depend  upon  it  there  is  only  one  way 
of  really  ennobling  any  calling,  and  that  is  to  make  those 
who  pursue  it  real  masters  of  their  craft,  men  who  can 
truly  do  that  which  they  profess  to  be  able  to  do,  and 
which  they  are  credited  with  being  able  to  do  by  the  public. 

10  And  there  is  no  position  so  ignoble  as  that  of  the  so-called 
"liberally-educated  practitioner,"  who,  as  Talleyrand  said 
of  his  physician,  "Knows  everything,  even  a  little  physic;" 
who  may  be  able  to  read  Galen  in  the  original ;  who  knows 
all  the  plants,  from  the  cedar  of  Lebanon  to  the  hyssop 

15  upon  the  wall;  but  who  finds  himself,  with  the  issues 
of  life  and  death  in  his  hands,  ignorant,  blundering, 
and  bewildered,  because  of  his  ignorance  of  the  essential 
and  fundamental  truths  upon  which  practice  must  be 
based.     Moreover,  I  venture  to  say,  that  any  man  who 

20  has  seriously  studied  all  the  essential  branches  of  medical 
knowledge;  who  has  the  needful  acquaintance  with  the 
elements  of  physical  science;  who  has  been  brought  by 
medical  jurisprudence  into  contact  with  law;  whose  study 
of  insanity  has  taken  him  into  the  fields  of  psychology 

25  has  ipso  facto  received  a  liberal  education. 

Having  lightened  the  medical  curriculum  by  culling  out 
of  it  everything  which  is  unessential  we  may  next  consider 
whether  something  may  not  be  done  to  aid  the  medical 
student  toward   the   acquirement  of  real   knowledge   by 

30  modifying  the  system  of  examination.  In  England,  within 
my  recollection,  it  wps  the  practice  to  require  of  the  medical 
student  attendance  on  lectures  upon  the  most  diverse 
topics  during  three  years;  so  that  it  often  happened  that 
he  would  have  to  listen,  in  the  course  of  a  day,  to  four  or 


120  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

five  lectures  upon  totally  different  subjects,  in  addition  to 
the  hours  given  to  dissection  and  to  hospital  practice: 
and  he  was  required  to  keep  all  the  knowledge  he  could 
pick  up,  in  this  distracting  fashion,  at  examination  point, 
until,  at  the  end  of  three  years,  he  was  set  down  to  a  table  5 
and  questioned  pell-mell  upon  all  the  different  matters 
with  which  he  had  been  striving  to  make  acquaintance. 
A  worse  system  and  one  more  calculated  to  obstruct  the 
acquisition  of  sound  knowledge  and  to  give  full  play  to  the 
"crammer"  and  the  "grinder"  could  hardly  have  been  10 
devised  by  human  ingenuity.  Of  late  years  great  reforms 
have  taken  place.  Examinations  have  been  divided  so  as 
to  diminish  the  number  of  subjects  among  which  the  atten- 
tion has  to  be  distributed.  Practical  examination  has 
been  largely  introduced ;  but  there  still  remains,  even  under  15 
the  present  system,  too  much  of  the  old  evil  inseparable 
from  the  contemporaneous  pursuit  of  a  multiplicity  of 
diverse  studies. 

Proposals  have  recently  been  made  to  get  rid  of  general 
examinations  altogether,  to  permit  the  student  to  be  20 
examined  in  each  subject  at  the  end  of  his  attendance  on 
the  class;  and  then,  in  case  of  the  result  being  satisfactory, 
to  allow  him  to  have  done  with  it;  and  I  may  say  that  this 
method  has  been  pursued  for  many  years  in  the  Royal 
School  of  Mines  in  London,  and  has  been  found  to  work  25 
very  well.  It  allows  the  student  to  concentrate  his  mind 
upon  what  he  is  about  for  the  time  being,  and  then  to 
dismiss  it.  Those  who  are  occupied  in  intellectual  work, 
will,  I  think,  agree  with  me  that  it  is  important,  not  so 
much  to  know  a  thing,  as  to  have  known  it,  and  known  it  30 
thoroughly.  If  you  have  once  known  a  thing  in  this  way 
it  is  easy  to  renew  your  knowledge  when  you  have  for- 
gotten it;  and  when  you  begin  to  take  the  subject  up  again, 
it  slides  back  upon  the  familiar  grooves  with  great  facility. 


EXPOSITION  121 

Lastly  comes  the  question  as  to  how  the  university  may 
cooperate  in  advancing  medical  education.  A  medical 
school  is  strictly  a  technical  school — a  school  in  which  a 
practical  profession  is  taught — ^while  a  university  ought 
5  to  be  a  place  in  which  knowledge  is  obtained  without 
direct  reference  to  professional  purposes.  It  is  clear, 
therefore,  that  a  university  and  its  antecedent,  the  school, 
may  best  cooperate  with  the  medical  school  by  making 
due  provision  for  the  study  of  those  branches  of  knowledge 

10  which  lie  at  the  foundation  of  medicine. 

At  present,  young  men  come  to  the  medical  schools 
without  a  conception  of  even  the  elements  of  physical 
science;  they  learn,  for  the  first  time,  that  there  are  such 
sciences  as  physics,  chemistry,  and  physiology,  and  are 

15  introduced  to  anatomy  as  a  new  thing.  It  may  be  safely 
said  that,  with  a  large  proportion  of  medical  students, 
much  of  the  first  session  is  wasted  in  learning  how  to  learn 
— in  familiarizing  themselves  with  utterly  strange  con- 
ceptions,  and  in   awakening  their  dormant  and  wholly 

20  untrained  powers  of  observation  and  of  manipulation. 
It  is  difl&cult  to  over-estimate  the  magnitude  of  the  obstacles 
which  are  thrown  in  the  way  of  scientific  training  by  the 
existing  system  of  school  education.  Not  only  are  men 
trained  in  mere  book-work,  ignorant  of  what  observation 

25  means,  but  the  habit  of  learning  from  books  alone  begets  a 
disgust  of  observation.  The  book-learned  student  will 
rather  trust  to  what  he  sees  in  a  book  than  to  the  witness 
of  his  own  eyes. 

There  is  not  the  least  reason  why  this  should  be  so,  and, 

30  in  fact,  when  elementary  education  becomes  that  which  I 
have  assumed  it  ought  to  be,  this  state  of  things  will  no 
longer  exist.  There  is  not  the  slightest  diflficulty  in 
giving  sound  elementary  instruction  in  physics,  in  chemistry 
and  in  the  elements  of  human  physiology,   in  ordinary 


122  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

schools.  In  other  words,there  is  no  reason  why  the  student 
should  not  come  to  the  medical  school,  provided  with  as 
much  knowledge  of  these  several  sciences  as  he  ordinarily 
picks  up,  in  the  course  of  his  first  year  of  attendance,  at 
the  medical  school.  5 

I  am  not  saying  this  without  full  practical  justification 
for  the  statement.  For  the  last  eighteen  years  we  have 
had  in  England  a  system  of  elementary  science  teaching 
carried  out  under  the  auspices  of  the  science  and  art 
department,  by  which  elementary  scientific  instruction  is  10 
made  readily  accessible  to  the  scholars  of  all  the  elementary 
schools  in  the  country.  Commencing  with  small  begin- 
nings, carefully  developed  and  improved,  that  system  now 
brings  up  for  examination  as  many  as  seven  thousand 
scholars  in  the  subject  of  human  physiology  alone.  I  can  15 
say  that,  out  of  that  number,  a  large  proportion  have 
acquired  a  fair  amount  of  substantial  knowledge:  and  that 
no  inconsiderable  percentage  show  as  good  an  acquaint- 
ance with  human  physiology  as  used  to  be  exhibited  by 
the  average  candidates  for  medical  degrees  in  the  University  20 
of  London,  when  I  was  first  an  examiner  there  twenty 
years  ago;  and  quite  as  much  knowledge  as  is  possessed 
by  the  ordinary  student  of  medicine  at  the  present  day.  I 
am  justified,  therefore,  in  looking  forward  to  the  time  when 
the  student  who  proposes  to  devote  himself  to  medicine  25 
will  come,  not  absolutely  raw  and  inexperienced  as  he  is 
at  present,  but  in  a  certain  state  of  preparation  for  further 
study;  and  I  look  to  the  university  to  help  him  still  forward 
in  that  stage  of  preparation,  through  the  organization  of 
its  biological  department.  Here  the  student  will  find  30 
means  of  acquainting  himself  with  the  phenomena  of  life 
in  their  broadest  acceptation.  He  will  study  not  botany 
and  zoology,  which,  as  I  have  said,  would  take  him  too 
far  away  from  his  ultimate  goal;  but,  by  duly  arranged 


EXPOSITION  123 

instruction,  combined  with  work  in  the  laboratory  upon  the 
leading  types  of  animal  and  vegetable  life,  he  will  lay  a 
broad,  and  at  the  same  time  solid,  foundation  of  biological 
knowledge;  he  will  come  to  his  medical  studies  with  a 
5  comprehension  of  the  great  truths  of  morphology  and  of 
physiology,  with  his  hands  trained  to  dissect  and  his  eyes 
taught  to  see.  I  have  no  hesitation  in  saying  that  such 
preparation  is  worth  a  full  year  added  on  to  the  medical 
curriculum.     In  other  words,  it  will  set 'free  that  much 

10  time  for  attention  to  those  studies  which  bear  directly 
upon  the  student's  most  grave  and  serious  duties  as  a 
medical  practitioner. 

Up  to  this  point  I  have  considered  only  the  teaching 
aspect   of  your  great   foundation,   that   function   of   the 

15  university  in  virtue  of  which  it  plays  the  part  of  a  reservoir 
of  ascertained  truth,  so  far  as  our  symbols  can  ever  interpret 
nature.  All  can  learn;  all  can  drink  of  this  lake.  It  is 
given  to  few  to  add  to  the  store  of  knowledge,  to  strike 
new  springs  of  thought,  or  to  shape  new  forms  of  beauty. 

20  But  so  sure  as  it  is  that  men  live  not  by  bread,  but  by 
ideas,  so  sure  is  it  that  the  future  of  the  world  lies  in  the 
hands  of  those  who  are  able  to  carry  the  interpretation 
of  nature  a  step  further  than  their  predecessors ;  so  certain 
is  it  that  the  highest  function  of  a  university  is  to  seek 

25  out  those  men,  cherish  them,  and  give  their  ability  to  serve 
their  kind  full  play. 

I  rejoice  to  observe  that  the  encouragement  of  research 
occupies  so  prominent  a  place  in  your  official  documents,  and 
in  the  wise  and  liberal  inaugural  address  of  your  president. 

30  This  subject  of  the  encouragement,  or,  as  it  is  sometimes 
called,  the  endowment  of  research,  has  of  late  years  greatly 
exercised  the  minds  of  men  in  England.  It  was  one  of  the 
main  topics  of  discussion  by  the  members  of  the  Royal 
Commission  of  whom  I  was  one,  and  who  not  long  since 


124  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

issued  their  report,  after  five  years'  labor.  Many  seem  to 
think  that  this  question  is  mainly  one  of  money;  that  you 
can  go  into  the  market  and  buy  research,  and  that  supply 
will  follow  demand,  as  in  the  ordinary  course  of  commerce. 
This  view  does  not  commend  itself  to  my  mind.  I  know  5 
of  no  more  difficult  practical  problem  than  the  discovery 
of  a  method  of  encouraging  and  supporting  the  original 
investigator  without  opening  the  door  to  nepotism  and 
jobbery.  My  own  conviction  is  admirably  summed  up  in 
the  passage  of  your  president's  address,  "that  the  best  10 
investigators  are  usually  those  who  have  also  the  responsi- 
bilities of  instruction,  gaining  thus  the  incitement  of 
colleagues,  the  encouragement  of  pupils,  and  the  observa- 
tion of  the  public." 

At  the  commencement  of  this  address  I  ventured  to  15 
assume  that  I  might,  if  I  thought  fit,  criticize  the  ar- 
rangements which  have  been  made  by  the  board  of  trustees, 
but  I  confess  that  I  have  little  to  do  but  to  applaud  them. 
Most  wise  and  sagacious  seems  to  me  the  determination 
not  to  build  for  the  present.     It  has  been  my  fate  to  see  20 
great   educational  funds  fossilize  into   mere  bricks   and 
mortar,   in   the  petrifying   springs   of   architecture,   with 
nothing  left  to  work  the  institution  they  were  intended  to 
support.     A  great  warrior  is  said  to  have  made  a  desert 
and  called  it  peace.     Administrators  of  educational  funds  25 
have  sometimes  made  a  palace  and  called  it  a  university. 
If  I  may  venture  to  give  advice  in  a  matter  which  lies  out 
of  my  proper  competency,  I  would  say  that  whenever  you 
do  build,  get  an  honest  brick-layer,  and  make  him  build 
you  just  such  rooms  as  you  really  want,  leaving  ample  30 
space  for  expansion.     And  a  century  hence,  when  the 
Baltimore  and  Ohio  shares  are  at  one  thousand  premium, 
and  you  have  endowed  all  the  professors  you  need,  and 
built  all  the  laboratories  that  are  wanted,  and  have  the 


EXPOSITION  125 

best  museum  and  the  finest  library  that  can  be  imagined; 
then,  if  you  have  a  few  thousand  hundred  dollars  you  don't 
know  what  to  do  with,  send  for  an  architect  and  tell  him 
to  put  up  a  f  a9ade.  If  American  is  similar  to  English  ex- 
5  perience,  any  other  course  will  probably  lead  you  into 
having  some  stately  structure,  good  for  your  architect's 
fame,  but  not  in  the  least  what  you  want. 

It  appears  to  me  that  what  I  have  ventured  to  lay  down 
as  the  principles  which  should  govern  the  relations  of  a 

10  university  to  education  in  general,  are  entirely  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  measures  you  have  adopted.  You 
have  set  no  restrictions  upon  access  to  the  instruction  you 
propose  to  give;  you  have  provided  that  such  instruction, 
either  as  given  by  the  university  or  by  associated  institu- 

15  tions,  should  cover  the  field  of  human  intellectual  activity. 
You  have  recognized  the  importance  of  encouraging 
research.  You  propose  to  provide  means  by  which  young 
men,  who  may  be  full  of  zeal  for  a  literary  or  for  a  scientific 
career,  but  who  also  may  have  mistaken  aspiration  for 

20  inspiration,  may  bring  their  capacities  to  a  test,  and  give 
their  powers  a  fair  trial.  If  such  a  one  fail,  his  endowment 
terminates,  and  there  is  no  harm  done.  If  he  succeed, 
you  may  give  power  of  flight  to  the  genius  of  a  Davy  or  a 
Faraday,  a  Carlyle  or  a  Locke,  whose  influence  on  the 

25  future  of  his  fellow-men  shall  be  absolutely  incalculable. 

You  have  enunciated  the  principle  that  "the  glory  of  the 

university  should  rest  upon  the  character  of  the  teachers 

and  scholars,  and  not  upon  their  numbers  or  buildings 

constructed  for  their  use."     And  I  look  upon  it  as  an 

30  essential  and  most  important  feature  of  your  plan  that  the 
income  of  the  professors  and  teachers  shall  be  independent 
of  the  number  of  students  whom  they  can  attract.  In 
this  way  you  provide  against  the  danger,  patent  elsewhere, 
of  finding  attempts  at  improvement  obstructed  by  vested 


126  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

interests;  and,  in  the  department  of  medical  education, 
especially,  you  are  free  of  the  temptation  to  set  loose  upon 
the  world  men  utterly  incompetent  to  perform  the  serious 
and  responsible  duties  of  their  profession. 

It  is  a  delicate  matter  for  a  stranger  to  the  practical  5 
working  of  your  institutions,  like  myself,  to  pretend  to 
give  an  opinion  as  to  the  organization  of  your  governing 
power.    I  can  conceive  nothing  better  than  that  it  should 
remain  as  it  is,  if  you  can  secure  a  succession  of  wise, 
liberal,  honest,  and  conscientious  men  to  fill  the  vacancies  10 
that  occur  among  you.     I  do  not  greatly  believe  in  the 
efficacy  of   any  kind  of  machinery  for  securing  such  a 
result;  but  I  would  venture  to  suggest  that  the  exclusive 
adoption   of  the  method  of   cooperation   for  filling   the 
vacancies  which  must  occur  in  your  body,  appears  to  me  15 
to  be  somewhat  like  a  tempting  of  Providence.     Doubtless 
there  are  grave  objections  to  the  appointment  of  persons 
outside  of  your  body,  and  not  directly  interested  in  the 
welfare  of  the  university;  but  might  it  not  be  well  if  there 
were  an  understanding  that  your  academic  staff  should  be  20 
officially  represented  on  the  board,  perhaps  even  the  heads 
of  one  or  two  independent  learned  bodies,  so  that  academic 
opinion  and  the  views  of  the  outside  world  might  have  a 
certain  influence  in  that  most  important  matter,  the  ap- 
pointment of  your  professors  ?  I  throw  out  these  suggestions,   25 
as  I  have  said,  in  ignorance  of  the  practical  difficulties 
that  may  lie  in  the  way  of  carrying  them  into  effect,  on 
the  general  ground  that  personal  and  local  influences  are 
very  subtle,  and  often  unconscious,  while  the  future  great- 
ness and  efficiency  of  the  noble  institution  which  now  30 
commences  its  work  must  largely  depend  upon  its  freedom 
from  them. 

I  constantly  hear  Americans  speak  of  the  charm  which 
our  old  mother  country  has  for  them,  of  the  deliglit  with 


EXPOSITION  .   127 

which  they  wander  through  the  streets  of  ancient  towns, 
or  cHmb  the  battlements  of  medieval  strongholds,  the 
names  of  which  are  indissolubly  associated  with  the  great 
epochs  of  that  noble  literature  which  is  our  common  in- 
5  heritance;  or  with  the  blood-stained  steps  of  that  secular 
progress,  by  which  the  descendants  of  the  savage  Britons 
and  of  the  wild  pirates  of  the  North  Sea  have  become  con- 
verted into  warriors  of  order  and  champions  of  peaceful 
freedom,  exhausting  what  still  remains  of  the  old  Berserk 

10  spirit  in  subduing  nature,  and  turning  the  wilderness  into  a 
garden.  But  anticipation  has  no  less  charm  than  retrospect, 
and  to  an  Englishman  landing  upon  your  shores  for  the 
first  time,  traveling  for  hundreds  of  miles  through  strings 
of  great  and  well-ordered  cities,  seeing  your  enormous 

15  actual,  and  almost  infinite  potential,  wealth  in  all  com- 
modities, and  in  the  energy  and  ability  which  turn  wealth 
to  account,  there  is  something  sublime  in  the  vista  of  the 
future.  Do  not  suppose  that  I  am  pandering  to  what  is 
commonly  understood  by  national  pride.     I  cannot  say 

20  that  I  am  in  the  slightest  degree  impressed  by  your  bigness, 
or  your  material  resources,  as  such.  Size  is  not  grandeur, 
and  territory  does  not  make  a  nation.  The  great  issue, 
about  which  hangs  a  true  sublimity,  and  the  terror  of 
overhanging  fate,  is  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  all 

25  these  things  ?  What  is  to  be  the  end  to  which  these  are  to 
be  the  means  .^  You  are  making  a  novel  experiment  in 
politics  on  the  greatest  scale  which  the  world  has  yet  seen. 
Forty  millions  at  your  first  centenary,  it  is  reasonably  to  be 
expected  that,  at  the  second,  these  States  will  be  occu- 

30  pied  by  two  hundred  millions  of  English-speaking  people, 
spread  over  an  area  as  large  as  that  of  Europe,  and  with 
climates  and  interests  as  diverse  as  those  of  Spain  and 
Scandinavia,  England  and  Russia.  You  and  your 
descendants  have  to  ascertain  whether  this  great  mass 


128  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

will  hold  together  under  the  forms  of  a  republic,  and  the 
despotic  reality  of  universal  suffrage;  whether  state  rights 
will  hold  out  against  centralization,  without  separation; 
whether  centralization  will  get  the  better,  without  actual 
or  disguised  monarchy;  whether  shifting  corruption  is  5 
better  than  a  permanent  bureaucracy;  and  as  population 
thickens  in  your  great  cities,  and  the  pressure  of  want  is 
felt,  the  gaunt  specter  of  pauperism  will  stalk  among  you, 
and  communism  and  socialism  will  claim  to  be  heard. 
Truly  America  has  a  great  future  before  her;  great  in  toil,  10 
in  care,  and  in  responsibility;  great  in  true  glory  if  she  be 
guided  in  wisdom  and  righteousness ;  great  in  shame  if  she 
fail.  I  cannot  understand  why  other  nations  should  envy 
you,  or  be  blind  to  the  fact  that  it  is  for  the  highest  interest 
of  mankind  that  you  should  succeed;  but  the  one  condition  15 
of  success,  your  sole  safeguard,  is  the  moral  worth  and 
intellectual  clearness  of  the  individual  citizen.  Education 
cannot  give  these,  but  it  may  cherish  them  and  bring  them 
to  the  front  in  whatever  station  of  society  they  are  to  be 
found;  and  the  universities  ought  to  be,  and  may  be,  the  20 
fortresses  of  the  higher  life  of  the  nation. 

May  the  university  which  commences  its  practical 
activity  to-morrow  abundantly  fulfil  its  high  purposes; 
may  its  renown  as  a  seat  of  true  learning,  a  center  of  free 
inquiry,  a  focus  of  intellectual  light,  increase  year  by  25 
year,  until  men  wander  hither  from  all  parts  of  the 
earth,  as  of  old  they  sought  Bologna,  or  Paris,  or 
Oxford. 

And  it  is  pleasant  to  me  to  fancy  that,  among  the  English 
students  who  are  drawn  to  you  at  that  time,  there  may  30 
linger  a-  dim  tradition  that  a  countryman  of  theirs  was 
permitted  to  address  you  as  he  has  done  to-day,  and  to 
feel  as  if  your  hopes  were  his  hopes  and  your  success  his 

joy- 


EXPOSITION  129 

Suggestions:  The  foregoing  address  is  interesting  for  many 
different  reasons.  Analyze  and  explain  the  plan  of  Huxley's 
exposition  here.  How  are  the  different  parts  proportioned? 
Is  undue  space  given  to  the  scientific  departments  of  a  univer- 
sity ?     If  so,  can  you  account  for  this,  in  any  way  ? 

Characterize  Huxley's  sentences  and  paragraphs  here.  Do 
you  note  any  changes  in  style  between  this  address  and  The 
Method  of  Scientific  Investigation?  Compare  Huxley's  modes 
of  illustration  with  those  that  you  have  noticed  in  Bryce.  Read 
aloud  the  opening  and  concluding  pages,  to  get  the  sentence 
cadence. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Explain,  for  a  former  friend,  at  high  school,  how  far  your 
university  or  college  exemplifies  Huxley's  idea  of  university 
education. 

Explain,  for  the  same  friend,  the  four  chief  differences  that 
you  have  observed  between  university,  or  college,  and  high 
school  modes  of  instruction. 

Advocate,  in  the  manner  of  Huxley,  the  establishment  of  a 
new  branch  of  study  in  your  college,  or  university. 


TWO  KINDS  OF  EDUCATION  FOR 
ENGINEERS 

J.  B.  Johnson 

EDUCATION  may  be  defined  as  a  means  of  gradual 
emancipation  from  the  thraldom  of  incompetence. 
Since  incompetence  leads  of  necessity  to  failure,  and  since 
competence  alone  leads  to  certain  success,  in  any  line  of 
human  endeavor,  and  since  the  natural  or  uneducated  man 
is  but  incompetence  personified,  it  is  of  supreme  importance 
that  this  thraldom,  or  this  enslaved  condition  in  which 
we  are  all  born   should  be  removed  in  some  way.     While 


130  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

unaided  individual  effort  has  worked,  and  will  continue 
to,  work,  marvels,  in  rare  instances  in  our  so-called  self- 
made  men,  these  recognized  exceptions  acknowledge 
the  rule  that  mankind  in  general  must  be  aided  in  acquiring 
this  complete  mastery  over  the  latent  powers  of  head,  5 
heart,  and  hand.  These  formal  aids  in  this  process  of 
emancipation  are  found  in  the  grades  of  schools  and  colleges 
with  which  the  children  of  this  country  are  now  blessed 
beyond  those  of  almost  any  other  country  or  time.  The 
boys  or  girls  who  fail  to  embrace  these  emancipating  1(] 
opportunities  to  the  fullest  extent  practicable,  are  thereby 
consenting  to  degrees  of  incompetence  and  their  corre- 
sponding and  resulting  failures  in  life,  which  they  have  had 
it  in  their  power  to  prevent.  This  they  will  ultimately 
discover  to  their  chagrin  and  even  grief,  when  it  is  too  late  15 
to  regain  the  lost  opportunities. 

There  are,  however,  two  general  classes  of  competency 
which  I  wish  to  discuss  to-day,  and  which  are  generated 
in  the  schools.  These  are.  Competency  to  Serve,  and 
Competency  to  Appreciate  and  Enjoy.  .  20 

By  competency  to  serve  is  meant  that  ability  to  perform 
one's  due  proportion  of  the  world's  work  which  brings  to 
society  a  common  benefit,  which  makes  of  this  world  a 
continually  better  home  for  the  race;  and  which  tends  to  fit 
the  race  for  that  immortal  life  in  which  it  puts  its  trust.  25 

By  competency  to  appreciate  and  enjoy  is  meant  that 
ability  to  understand,  to  appropriate,  and  to  assimilate 
those  great  personal  achievements  of  the  past  and  present 
in  the  fields  of  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  which 
brings  into  our  lives  a  kind  of  peace,  and  joy,  and  gratitude  30 
which  can  be  found  in  no  other  way. 

It  is  true  that  all  kinds  of  elementary  education  con- 
tribute alike  to  both  of  these  ends,  but  in  the  so-called  higher 
education  it  is  too  common  to  choose  between  them  rather 


EXPOSITION  131 

than  to  include  them  both.  Since  it  is  only  service  which 
the  world  is  willing  to  pay  for,  it  is  only  those  competent 
and  willing  to  serve  a  public  or  private  utility  who  are 
compensated  in  a  financial  way.  It  is  the  education 
5  which  brings  a  competency  to  serve,  therefore,  which  is 
often  called  the  utilitarian,  and  sometimes  spoken  of  con- 
temptuously as  the  bread-and-butter,  education.  On 
the  other  hand  the  education  which  gives  a  competency 
to  appreciate  and  to  enjoy  is  commonly  spoken  of  as  a 

10  cultured  education.  As  to  which  kind  of  education  is  the 
higher  and  nobler,  if  they  must  be  contrasted,  it  all  depends 
on  the  point  of  view.  If  personal  pleasure  and  happiness 
is  the  chief  end  and  aim  in  life,  then  for  that  class  of  persons 
who  have  no  disposition  to  serve,  the  cultural  education  is 

15  the  more  worthy  of  admiration  and  selection  (conditioned 
of  course  on  the  bodily  comforts  being  so  far  provided  for 
as  to  make  all  financial  compensations  of  no  object  to  the 
individual).  If,  however,  service  to  others  is  the  most 
worthy  purpose  in  life,  and  if  in  addition  such  service 

20  brings  the  greatest  happiness,  then  that  education  which 
develops  the  ability  to  serve,  in  some  capacity,  should  be 
regarded  as  the  higher  and  more  worthy.  This  kind  of 
education  has  the  further  advantage  that  the  money 
consideration  it  brings  makes  its  possessor  a  self-supporting 

25  member  of  society  instead  of  a  drone  or  parasite,  which 
those  people  must  be  who  can  not  serve.  I  never  could  see 
the  force  of  the  statement  that  "they  also  serve  who  only 
stand  and  wait."  It  is  possible  they  may  serve  their 
own  pleasures,  but  if  this  is  all,  the  statement  should  be  so 

30  qualified. 

The  higher  education  which  leads  to  a  life  of  service  has 
been  known  as  a  professional  education,  as  law,  medicine, 
the  ministry,  teaching,  and  the  like.  These  have  long 
been  known  as  the  learned  professions.     A  learned  pro- 


132  A  COLLEGE  COUKSE  IN  WRITING 

fession  may  be  defined  as  a  vocation  in  which  scholarly 
accomplishments  are  used  in  the  service  of  society  or  of 
other  individuals,  for  a  valuable  consideration.     Under 
such  a  definition  every  new  vocation  in  which  a  very  con- 
siderable amount  of  scholarship  is  required  for  its  sue-  5 
cessful  prosecution,    and  which  is  placed  in   the   service 
of  others,  must  be  held  as  a  learned  profession.      And  as 
engineering  now  demands  fully  as  great  an  amount  of 
learning,    or  scholarship,    as    any   other,  it   has  already 
taken  a  high  rank  among  these  professions,  although  as  a  10 
learned  profession  it  is  scarcely  half  a  century  old.     En- 
gineering differs  from  all  other  learned  professions,  how- 
ever, in  this,  that  its  learning  has  to  do  only  with  the 
inanimate  world,   the  world  of  dead  matter  and  force. 
The  materials,  the  laws,  and  the  forces  of  nature,  and  scarce-   15 
ly  to  any  extent  its  life,  is  the  peculiar  field  of  the  engineer. 
Not  only  is  the  engineer  pretty  thoroughly  divorced  from 
life  in  general,  but  even  with  that  society  of  which  he  is  a 
part  his  professional  life  has  little  in  common.     His  pro- 
fession is  so  new  it  practically  has  no  past,  either  of  history  20 
or  of  literature,  which  merits  his  consideration,  much  less 
his  laborious  study.     Neither  do  the  ordinary  social  or 
political  problems  enter  in  any  way  into  his  sphere  of 
operations.     Natural  law,  dead  matter,  and  lifeless  force 
make  up  his  working  world,  and  in  these  he  lives  and  25 
moves   and   has  his  professional   being.      Professionally 
regarded,  what  to  him  is  the  history  of  his  own  or  of  other 
races?     What  have  the  languages  and  the  literatures  of 
the  world  of  value  to  him?     What   interest  has  he  in 
domestic  or  foreign  politics,  or  in  the  various  social  and  SO 
religious  problems  of  the  day?    In  short  what  interest  is 
there  for  him  in  what  we  now  commonly  include  in  the 
term  "the  humanities?"     It  must  be  confessed  that  in  a 
professional  way  they  have  little  or  none.     Except  perhaps 


EXPOSITION  133 

two  other  modern  languages  by  which  he  obtains  access 
to  the  current  progress  in  applied  science,  he  has  practically 
no  professional  interest  in  any  of  these  things.  His 
structures  are  made  no  safer  or  more  economical;  his 
5  prime-movers  are  no  more  powerful  or  efficient;  his  electric- 
al wonders  no  more  occult  or  useful;  his  tools  no  more 
ingenious  or  effective,  because  of  a  knowledge  of  all  these 
humanistic  affairs.  As  a  mere  server  of  society,  therefore, 
an  engineer  is  about  as  good  a  tool  without  all  this  cultural 

10  knowledge  as  with  it.  But  as  a  citizen,  as  a  husband 
and  father,  as  a  companion,  and  more  than  all,  as  one's 
own  constant,  perpetual,  unavoidable  personality,  the 
taking  into  one's  life  of  a  large  knowledge  of  the  life  and 
thought  of  the  world,  both  past  and  present,  is  a  very 

15  important  matter  indeed,  and  of  these  two  kinds  of  educa- 
tion, as  they  affect  the  life-work,  the  professional  success, 
and  the  personal  happiness  of  the  engineer,  I  will  speak 
more  in  detail. 

I  am  here  using  the  term  engineer  as  including  that 

20  large  class  of  modern  industrial  workers  who  make  the 
new  application  of  science  to  the  needs  of  modern  life  their 
peculiar  business  and  profession.  A  man  of  this  class 
may  also  be  called  an  applied  scientist.  Evidently  he 
must  have  a  large  acquaintance  with  such  practical  sciences 

25  as  surveying,  physics,  chemistry,  geology,  metallurgy, 
electricity,'  applied  mechanics,  kinematics,  machine  design, 
power  generation  and  transmission,  structural  designing, 
land  and  water  transportation,  etc.,  etc.  And  as  a 
common  solvent  of  all  the  problems  arising  in  these  various 

30  subjects  he  must  have  acquired  an  extended  knowledge 
of  mathematics,  without  which  he  would  be  like  a  sailor 
with  neither  compass  nor  rudder.  To  the  engineer 
mathematics  is  a  tool  of  investigation,  a  means  to  an  end, 
and  not  the  end  itself.     The  same  may  be  said  of  his 


134  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

physics,  his  chemistry,  and  of  all  his  other  scientific 
studies.  They  are  all  to  be  made  tributary  to  the  solution 
of  problems  which  may  arise  in  his  professional  career. 
His  entire  technical  education,  in  fact,  is  presumably 
of  the  useful  character,  and  acquired  for  specific  useful  5 
ends.  Similarly  he  needs  a  free  and  correct  use  of  his 
mother  tongue,  that  he  may  express  himself  clearly  and 
forcibly  both  in  speech  and  composition,  and  an  ability 
to  read  both  French  and  German,  that  he  may  read  the 
current  technical  literature  in  the  two  other  languages  10 
which  are  most  fruitful  in  new  and  original  technical 
matter. 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  mental  development,  the  growth 
of  one's  mental  powers  and  the  command  over  the  same, 
which  comes  incidentally  in  the  acquisition  of  all  this  tech-  15 
nical  knowledge,  is  of  far  more  value  than  the  knowledge 
itself,  and  hence  great  care  is  given  in  all  good  technical 
schools  to  the  mental  processes  of  the  students,  and  to  a 
thorough  and  logical  method  of  presentation  and  of 
acquisition.  In  other  words,  while  you  are  under  our  20 
instruction  it  is  much  more  important  that  you  should 
think  consecutively,  rationally,  and  logically,  than  that 
your  conclusions  should  be  numerically  correct.  But  as 
soon  as  you  leave  the  school  the  exact  reverse  will  hold. 
Your  employer  is  not  concerned  with  your  mental  develop-  25 
ment,  or  with  your  mental  processes,  so  long  as  your 
results  are  correct,  and  hence  we  must  pay  some  attention 
to  numerical  accuracy  in  the  school,  especially  in  the  upper 
classes.  We  must  remember,  however,  that  the  mind 
of  the  engineer  is  primarily  a  workshop  and  not  a  ware-  30 
house  or  lumber-room  of  mere  information.  Your  facts 
are  better  stored  in  your  library.  Room  there  is  not  so 
valuable  as  it  is  in  the  mind,  and  the  information,  further- 
more, is  better  preserved.     Memory  is  as  poor  a  reliance 


EXPOSITION  135 

to  the  engineer  as  to  the  accountant.  Both  aHke  should 
consult  their  books  when  they  want  the  exact  facts.  Know- 
ledge alone  is  not  power.  The  ability  to  use  knowledge 
is  a  latent  power,  and  the  actual  use  of  it  is  a  power. 
$  Instead  of  storing  your  minds  with  useful  knowledge 
therefore,  I  will  say  to  you,  store  your  minds  with  useful 
tools,  and  with  a  knowledge  only  of  how  to  use  such  tools. 
Then  your  minds  will  become  mental  workshops,  well 
fitted  for  turning  out  products  of  untold  value  to  your  day 

10  and  generation.  Everything  you  acquire  in  your  course 
in  this  college,  therefore,  you  should  look  upon  as  mental 
tools  with  which  you  are  equipping  yourselves  for  your 
future  careers.  It  may  well  be  that  some  of  your  work 
will  be  useful  rather  for  the  sharpening  of  your  wits  and 

15  for  the  development  of  mental  grasp,  just  as  gymnastic 
exercise  is  of  use  only  in  developing  your  physical  system. 
In  this  case  it  has  served  as  a  tool  of  development  instead 
of  one  for  subsequent  use.  Because  all  your  knowledge 
here  gained  is  to  serve  you  as  tools  it  must  be  acquired 

20  quantitatively  rather  than  qualitatively.  First,  last,  and 
all  the  time,  you  are  required  to  know  not  how  simply, 
but  how  much,  how  far,  how  fast,  to  what  extent,  at  what 
cost,  with  what  certainty,  and  with  what  factor  of  safety. 
In  the  cultural  education,  where  one  is  learning  only  to 

25  appreciate  and  to  enjoy,  it  may  satisfy  the  average  mind  to 
know  that  coal  burned  under  a  boiler  generates  steam 
which  entering  a  cylinder  moves  a  piston  which  turns  the 
engine,  and  stop  with  that.  But  the  engineer  must  know 
how  many  heat  units  there  are  in  a  pound  of  coal  burned, 

30  how  many  of  these  are  generated  in  the  furnace,  how  many 
of  them  pass  into  the  water,  how  much  steam  is  con- 
sumed by  the  engine  per  horse-power  per  hour,  and  finally 
how  much  effective  work  is  done  by  the  engine  per  pound 
of  coal  fed  to  the  furnace.     Merely  qualitative  knowledge 


136  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

leads  to  the  grossest  errors  of  judgment  and  is  of  that 
kind  of  Uttle  learning  which  is  a  dangerous  thing.  At 
my  summer  home  I  have  a  hydraulic  ram  set  below  a 
dam,  for  furnishing  a  water  supply.  Nearby  is  an  old 
abandoned  water-power  grist  mill.  A  man  and  his  wife  5 
were  looking  at  the  ram  last  summer  and  the  lady  was 
overheard  to  ask  what  it  was  for.  The  man  looked  about, 
saw  the  idle  water-wheel  of  the  old  mill,  and  ventured  the 
opinion  that  it  must  be  used  to  run  the  mill!  He  knew  a 
hydraulic  ram  when  he  saw  it  and  he  knew  it  was  used  to  10 
generate  power,  and  that  power  would  run  a  mill.  Ergo, 
a  hydraulic  ram  will  run  a  mill.  This  is  on  a  par  with 
thousands  of  similar  errors  of  judgment  where  one's 
knowledge  is  qualitative  only.  All  engineering  problems 
are  purely  quantitative  from  beginning  to  the  end,  and  so  15 
are  all  other  problems,  in  fact,  whether  material,  or 
moral,  or  financial,  or  commercial,  or  social,  or  political,  or 
religious.  All  judgments  passed  on  such  problems,  there- 
fore, must  be  quantitative  judgments.  How  poorly 
prepared  to  pass  such  judgments  are  those  whose  know-  20 
ledge  is  qualitative  only!  Success  in  all  fields  depends 
very  largely  on  the  accuracy  of  one's  judgment  in  foreseeing 
events,  and  in  engineering  it  depends  wholly  on  such  ac- 
curacy. An  engineer  must  see  all  around  his  problems, 
and  take  account  of  every  contingency  which  can  happen  25 
in  the  ordinary  course  of  events.  When  all  such  con- 
tingencies have  been  foreseen  and  provided  against,  then 
the  unexpected  cannot  happen,  as  everything  has  been 
foreseen.  It  is  customary  to  say  "The  unexpected  always 
happens."  This  of  course  is  untrue.  What  is  meant  30 
is  "It  is  only  the  unexpected  which  happens,"  for  the  very 
good  reason  that  what  has  been  anticipated  has  been 
provided  against. 

In  order  that  knowledge  may  be  used  as  a  tool  in  in- 


EXPOSITION  137 

vestigations  and  in  the  solution  of  problems,  it  must  be 
so  used  constantly  during  the  period  of  its  acquisition. 
Hence  the  large  amount  of  drawing-room,  field,  laboratory, 
and  shop  practice  introduced  into  our  engineering  courses. 
5  We  try  to  make  theory  and  practice  go  hand  in  hand. 
In  fact  we  teach  that  theory  is  only  generalized  practice. 
From  the  necessary  facts,  observed  in  special  experiments 
or  in  actual  practice,  and  which  cover  a  sufficiently  wide 
range  of  conditions,  general  principles  are  deduced  from 

10  which  effects  of  given  like  causes  can  be  foreseen  or  de- 
rived, for  new  cases  arising  in  practice.  This  is  like  saying, 
in  surveying,  that  with  a  true  and  accurate  hind-sight  an 
equally  true  and  accurate  forward  course  can  be  run. 
Nearly    all    engineering    knowledge,    outside    the    pure 

15  mathematics,  is  of  this  experimental  or  empirical  character, 
and  we  generally  know  who  made  the  experiments,  under 
what  conditions,  over  what  range  of  varying  conditions, 
how  accordant  his  results  were,  and  hence  what  weight 
can  be  given  to  his  conclusions.     When  we  can  find  in 

20  our  engineering  literature  no  sufficiently  accurate  data, 
or  none  exactly  covering  the  case  in  hand,  we  must  set 
to  work  to  make  a  set  of  experiments  which  will  cover  the 
given  conditions,  so  as  to  obtain  numerical  factors,  or 
possibly  new  laws,  which  will  serve  to  make  our  calculations 

25  prove  true  in  the  completed  structure  or  scheme.  The 
ability  to  plan  and  carry  out  such  crucial  tests  and  experi- 
ments is  one  of  the  most  important  objects  of  an  engineering 
college  training,  and  we  give  our  students  a  large  amount 
of  such  laboratory  practice.     In  all  such  work  it  is  the 

30  absolute  truth  we  are  seeking  and  hence  any  guessing  at 
data,  or  falsifying  of  records,  or  "doctoring"  of  the  com- 
putations is  of  the  nature  of  a  professional  crime.  Any 
copying  of  records  from  other  observers,  when  students 
are  supposed  to  make  their  own  observations,  is  both  a 


138  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

fraud  upon  themselves  as  well  as  dishonest  to  their  in- 
structor, and  indicates  a  disposition  of  mind  which  has 
nothing  in  common  with  that  of  the  engineer,  who  is  al- 
ways and  everywhere  a  truth-seeker  and  truth- tester. 
The  sooner  such  a  person  leaves  the  college  of  engineering  5 
the  better  for  him  and  the  engineering  profession.  Men 
in  other  professions  may  blunder  or  play  false  with  more 
or  less  impunity.  Thus  the  lawyer  may  advocate  a  bad 
cause  without  losing  caste;  a  physician  may  blunder 
at  will,  but  his  mistakes  are  soon  buried  out  of  sight;  a  10 
minister  may  advocate  what  he  no  longer  believes  himself, 
and  feel  that  the  cause  justifies  his  course;  but  the  mistakes 
of  the  engineer  are  quick  to  find  him  out  and  to  proclaim 
aloud  his  incompetence.  He  is  the  one  professional  man 
who  is  obliged  to  be  right,  and  for  whom  sophistry  an  1  1" 
self-deception  are  a  fatal  poison.  But  the  engineer  must 
be  more  than  honest,  he  must  be  able  to  discern  the  truth. 
With  him  an  honest  motive  is  no  justification.  He  must 
not  only  believe  he  is  right;  he  must  knoiv  that  he  is  right. 
And  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  elements  of  satisfaction  in  20 
this  profession,  that  it  is  commonly  possible  to  secure  in 
advance  this  almost  absolute  certainty  of  results.  We 
deal  with  fixed  laws  and  forces,  and  only  so  far  as  the 
materials  used  may  be  faulty,  or  of  unknown  character, 
or  as  contingencies  could  not  be  foreseen  or  anticipated,  25 
do^es  a  necessary  ignorance  enter  into  the  problem. 

It  must  not  be  understood,  however,  that  with  all  of 
both  theory  and  practice  we  are  able  to  give  our  students 
in  their  four-  or  five-year  course,  that  they  will  be  full- 
fledged  engineers  when  they  leave  us.  They  ought  to  30 
be  excellent  material  out  of  which,  with  a  few  years' 
actual  practice,  they  would  become  engineers  of  the  first 
order.  Just  as  a  young  physician  must  have  experience 
with  actual  patients,  and  as  a  young  lawyer  must  have 


EXPOSITION  139 

actual  experience  in  the  courts,  so  must  an  engineer  have 
experience  with  real  problems  before  he  can  rightfully 
lay  claim  to  the  title  of  engineer.  And  in  seeking  this 
professional  practice  they  must  not  be  too  choice.     As  a 

5  rule  the  higher  up  one  begins  the  sooner  his  promotion 
stops,  and  the  lower  down  he  begins  the  higher  will  he 
ultimately  climb.  The  man  at  the  top  should  know  in  a 
practical  way  all  the  work  over  which  he  is  called  upon 
to  preside,  and  this  means  beginning  at  the  bottom.     Too 

10  many  of  our  graduates  refuse  to  do  this,  and  so  they  stop 
in  a  middle  position,  instead  of  coming  into  the  manage- 
ment of  the  business,  which  position  is  reserved  for  a  man 
who  knows  it  all  from  the  bottom  up.  Please  under- 
stand that  no  position  is  too  menial  in  the  learning  of  a 

15  business.  But  as  your  college  training  has  enabled  you 
to  learn  a  new  thing  rapidly,  you  should  rapidly  master 
these  minor  details  of  any  business,  and  in  a  few  years 
you  should  be  far  ahead  of  the  ordinary  apprentice  who 
went  to  work  from  the  grammar  or  from  the  high  school. 

20  The  great  opportunity  for  the  engineer  of  the  future  is  in 
the  direction  and  management  of  our  various  manufactur- 
ing industries.  We  are  about  to  become  the  world's 
workshop,  and  as  competition  grows  sharper  and  as 
greater    economies    become    necessary,    the    technically 

25  trained  man  will  become  an  absolute  necessity  in  the 
leading  positions  in  all  our  industrial  works.  These  are 
the  positions  hitherto  held  by  men  who  have  grown  up 
with  the  business,  but  without  technical  training.  They 
are   being   rapidly   supplanted   by   technical   men,   who, 

30  however,  must  serve  their  apprenticeship  in  the  business, 
from  the  bottom  up.  With  this  combination  of  theory 
and  practice,  and  with  the  American  genius  for  invention, 
and  with  our  superb  spirit  of  initiative  and  of  independence, 
we  are  already  setting  a  pace  industrially  which  no  other 


140  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

nation  can  keep,  and  which  will  soon  leave  all  others 
hopelessly  behind. 

In  the  foregoing  description  of  the  technical  education 
and  work  of  the  engineer,  the  engineer  himself  has  been 
considered  as  a  kind  of  human  tool  to  be  used  in  the  interest  5 
of  society.  His  service  to  society  alone  has  been  in  con- 
templation. But  as  the  engineer  has  also  a  personality 
which  is  capable  of  appreciation  and  enjoyment  of  the 
best  this  world  has  produced  in  the  way  of  literature  and 
art;  as  he  is  to  be  a  citizen  and  a  man  of  family;  and  more-  10 
over,  since  he  has  a  conscious  self  with  which  he  must 
always  commune  and  from  which  he  cannot  escape,  it  is 
well  worth  his  while  to  see  to  it  that  this  self,  this  husband 
and  father,  this  citizen  and  neighbor,  is  something  more 
than  a  tool  to  be  worked  in  other  men's  interests,  and  that  15 
his  mind  shall  contain  a  library,  a  parlor,  and  a  drawing- 
room,  as  well  as  a  workshop.  And  yet  how  many  engineers' 
minds  are  all  shop  and  out  of  which  only  shop-talk  can  be 
drawn!  Such  men  are  little  more  than  animated  tools, 
worked  in  the  interest  of  society.  They  are  liable  to  be  20 
something  of  a  bore  to  their  families  and  friends,  almost  a 
cipher  in  the  social  and  religious  life  of  the  community, 
and  a  weariness  to  the  flesh  to  their  more  liberal  minded 
professional  brethren.  Their  lives  are  one  continuous 
grind,  which  has  for  them  doubtless  a  certain  grim  satisfac-  25 
tion,  but  which  is  monotonous  and  tedious  in  comparison 
with  what  they  might  have  been.  Even  when  valued 
by  the  low  standard  of  money-making  they  are  not  nearly 
so  likely  to  secure  lucrative  incomes  as  they  would  be  with 
a  greater  breadth  of  information  and  worldly  interest.  30 
They  are  likely  to  stop  in  snug  professional  berths  which 
they  find  ready-made  for  them,  under  some  sort  of  fixed 
administration,  and  maintain  through  life  a  subordinate 
relation  to  directing  heads  who,  with  a  tithe  of  their  techni- 


EXPOSITION  141 

cal  ability,  are  yet  able,  with  their  worldly  knowledge, 
their  breadth  of  interests,  and  their  fellowship  with  men, 
to  dictate  to  these  narrower  technical  subordinates,  and  to 
fix  for  them  their  fields  of  operation. 
5  In  order,  therefore,  that  the  technical  man,  who  in 
material  things  knows  what  to  do  and  how  to  do  it,  may 
be  able  to  get  the  thing  done  and  to  direct  the  doing  of  it, 
he  must  be  an  engineer  of  men  and  of  capital  as  well  as 
of  the  materials  and  forces  of  nature.     In  other  words 

10  he  must  cultivate  human  interests,  human  learning, 
human  associations,  and  avail  himself  of  every  opportunity 
to  further  these  personal  and  business  relations.  If  he 
can  make  himself  a  good  business  man,  or  as  good  a  man- 
ager of  men,  as  he  usually  makes  of  himself  in  the  field  of 

15  engineering  he  has  chosen,  there  is  no  place  too  great, 
and  no  salary  too  high  for  him  to  aspire  to.  Of  such  men 
are  our  greatest  railroad  presidents  and  general  managers, 
and  the  directors  of  our  largest  industrial  establishments. 
While  most  of  this  kind  of  knowledge  must  also  be  acquired 

20  in  actual  practice,  yet  some  of  it  can  best  be  obtained  in 
college.  I  shall  continue  to  urge  upon  all  young  men 
who  can  afford  it  either  to  take  the  combined  six-year 
college  and  engineering  course,  described  in  our  catalogue, 
or  the  five-year  course    in  the  College  of  Engineering, 

25  taking  as  extra  studies  many  things  now  taught  in  our 
School  of  Commerce.  The  one  crying  weakness  of  our 
engineering  graduates  is  ignorance  of  the  business,  the 
social,  and  the  political  world,  and  of  human  interests  in 
general.    They  have  little  knowledge  in  common  with  the 

30  graduates  of  our  literary  colleges,  and  hence  often  find 
little  pleasure  in  such  associations.  They  become  clannish, 
run  mostly  with  men  of  their  class,  take  little  interest  in  the 
commercial  or  business  departments  of  the  establish- 
ments with  which  they  are  connected,  and  so  become 


142  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

more  and  more  fixed  in  their  inanimate  worlds  of  matter 
and  force.  I  beseech  you,  therefore,  while  yet  students, 
to  try  to  broaden  your  interests,  extend  your  horizons  now 
into  other  fields,  even  but  for  a  bird's-eye  view,  and 
profit,  so  far  as  possible,  by  the  atmosphere  of  universal  5 
knowledge  which  you  can  breathe  here  through  the  entire 
period  of  your  college  course.  Try  to  find  a  chum  who  is 
in  another  department;  go  to  literary  societies;  haunt  the 
library;  attend  the  available  lectures  in  literature,  science, 
and  art,  attend  the  meetings  of  the  Science  Club;  and  in  10 
every  way  possible,  with  a  peep  here  and  a  word  there, 
improve  to  the  utmost  these  marvelous  opportunities 
which  will  never  come  to  you  again.  Think  not  of  tasks; 
call  no  assignments  by  such  a  name.  Gall  them  oppor- 
tunities, and  cultivate  a  hunger  and  thirst  for  all  kinds  of  15 
humanistic  knowledge  outside  your  particular  world  of 
dead  matter,  for  you  will  never  again  have  such  an  oppor- 
tunity, and  you  will  be  always  thankful  that  you  made  good 
use  of  this,  your  one  chance  in  a  lifetime. 

For  your  own  personal  happiness,  and  that  of  your  20 
immediate  associates,  secure  in  some  way,  either  in  college 
or  after  leaving  the  same,  an  acquaintance  with  the  world's 
best  literature,  with  the  leading  facts  of  history,  and  with 
the  biographies  of  many  of  the  greatest  men  in  pure  and 
applied  science,  as  well  as  of  statesmen  and  leaders  in   25 
many  fields.     With  this  knowledge  of  great  men,  great 
thoughts,  and  great  deeds,  will  come  that  lively  interest 
in  men  and  affairs  which  is  held  by  educated  men  generally, 
and  which  will  put  you  on  an  even  footing  with  them  in 
your  daily  intercourse.     This  kind  of  knowledge,   also,  30 
elevates  and  sweetens  the  intellectual  life,  leads  to  the 
formation  of  lofty  ideals,  helps  one  to  a  command  of  good 
English,  and  in  a  hundred  ways  refines,  and  inspires  to 
high  and  noble  endeavor.     This  is  the  cultural  education 


EXPOSITION  143 

leading    to    that    appreciation    and    enjoyment    man    is 
assumed  to  possess. 

Think  not,  however,  that  I  depreciate  the  pecuHar  work 
of  the  engineering  college.  It  is  by  this  kind  of  education 
5  alone  that  America  has  already  become  supreme  in  nearly 
all  lines  of  material  advancement.  I  am  only  anxious 
that  the  men  who  have  made  these  things  possible  shall 
reap  their  full  share  of  the  benefits. 

In  conclusion  let  me  congratulate  you  on  having  selected 

10  courses  of  study  which  will  bring  you  into  the  most  intimate 
relations  with  the  world's  work  of  your  generation.  All 
life  to-day  is  one  endless  round  of  scientific  applications 
of  means  to  ends,  but  such  applications  are  still  in  their 
infancy.    A  decade  now  sees  more  material  progress  than  a 

15  century  did  in  the  past.  Not  to  be  scientifically  trained  in 
these  matters  is  equivalent  to-day  to  a  practical  exclusion 
from  all  part  and  share  in  the  industrial  world.  The 
entire  direction  of  the  world's  industry  and  commerce  is 
to  be  in  your  hands.     You  are  also  charged  with  making 

20  the  innumerable  new  discoveries  and  inventions  which 
will  come  in  your  generation  and  almost  wholly  through 
men  of  your  class.  The  day  of  the  inventor,  ignorant  of 
science  and  of  nature's  laws,  has  gone  by.  The  mere 
mechanical  contrivances  have  been  pretty  well  exhausted. 

25  Henceforth  profitable  invention  must  include  the  use  or 
embodiment  of  scientific  principles  with  which  the  un- 
trained artisan  is  unacquainted.  More  and  more  will 
invention  be  but  the  scientific  application  of  means  to 
ends,  and  this  is  what  we  teach  in  the  engineering  schools. 

30  Already  our  patent  office  is  much  puzzled  to  distinguish 
between  engineering  and  invention.  Since  engineering 
proper  consists  in  the  solution  of  new  problems  in  the 
material  world,  and  invention  is  likewise  the  discovery 
of  new  ways  of  doing  things,  they  cover  the  same  field. 


144  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

But  an  invention  is  patentable,  while  an  engineering  solu- 
tion is  not.     Invention  is  supposed  in  law  to  be  an  inborn 
faculty  by  which  new  truth  is  conceived  by  no  definable 
way  of  approach.     If  it  had  not  been  reached  by  this 
particular  individual  it  is  assumed  that  it  might  never  5 
have  been  known.     An  engineering  solution  is  supposed, 
and  rightly,  to  have  been  reached  by  logical  processes, 
through  known  laws  of  matter,  and  force,  and  motion, 
so  that  another  engineer,  given  the  same  problem,  would 
probably  have  reached  the  same  or  an  equivalent  result.   10 
And  this  is  not  patentable.     Already  a  very  large  propor- 
tion of  the  patents  issued  could  be  nullified  on  this  ground 
if  the  attorneys  only  knew  enough  to  make  their  case. 
More  and  more,  therefore,  are  the  men  of  your  class  to  be 
charged  with  the  responsibility  and  to  be  credited  with  the  15 
honor  of  the  world's  progress,  and  more  and  more  is  the 
world's  work  to  be  placed  under  your  direction.     The 
world  will  be  remade  by  every  succeeding  generation,  and 
all  by  the  technically  educated  class.     These  are  your 
responsibilities   and  your  honors.     The  tasks  are  great  io 
and  great  will   be  your  rewards.     That  you   may  fitly 
prepare  yourself  for  them  is  the  hope  and  trust  of  your 
teachers  in  this  college  of  engineering. 

I  will  close  this  address  by  quoting  Professor  Huxley's 
definition  of  a  liberal  education.  Says  Huxley:  "That  25 
man,  I  think,  has  had  a  liberal  education  who  has  been  so 
trained  in  youth  that  his  body  is  the  ready  servant  of  his 
will,  and  does  with  ease  and  pleasure  all  the  work  that, 
as  a  mechanism,  it  is  capable  of;  whose  intellect  is  a  clear, 
cold,  logic-engine,  with  all  its  parts  of  equal  strength,  30 
and  in  smooth  working  order;  ready,  like  a  steam  engine, 
to  be  turned  to  any  kind  of  work,  and  spin  the  gossamers 
as  well  as  forge  the  anchors  of  the  mind;  whose  mind  is 
stored  with  a  knowledge  of  the  great  and  fundamental 


EXPOSITION  145 

truths  of  Nature  and  of  the  laws  of  her  operations;  one 
who,  no  stunted  ascetic,  is  full  of  life  and  fire,  but  whose 
passions  are  trained  to  come  to  heel  by  a  vigorous  will,  the 
servant  of  a  tender  conscience;  who  has  learned  to  love  all 
5  beauty,  whether  of  nature  or  of  art,  to  hate  all  vileness, 
and  to  respect  others  as  himself. 

"Such  a  one  and  no  other,  I  conceive,  has  had  a  liberal 
education;  for  he  is,  as  completely  as  a  man  can  be,  in 
harmony  with  Nature.  He  will  make  the  best  of  her, 
10  and  she  of  him.  They  will  get  on  together  rarely;  she  as 
his  ever  beneficent  mother;  he  as  her  mouthpiece,  her 
conscious  self,  her  minister  and  interpreter. " 

Suggestions:  Compare  this  address  with  the  preceding  one 
by  Huxley,  in  subject  matter  and  in  style.  For  what  kind  of 
audience  was  each  one  intended  ?  What  variations  arise,  in 
each  case,  as  the  evident  result  of  differing  audiences  ? 

Note  the  plan  of  Two  Kinds  of  Education  for  Engineers.  Is 
it  followed  clearly  ?  Show  the  limits  of  each  structural  division. 
How  effective  is  the  conclusion  ? 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Three  reasons  why  an  engineering  student  need  not  be  "  pretty 
thoroughly  divorced  from  college  life  in  general. " 

The  engineer  is  "the  one  professional  man  who  is  obliged 
to  be  right:"  a  comparison  and  a  conclusion. 

Two  kinds  of  "college  life"   for  engineers. 


SWEETNESS  AND  LIGHT 

Matthew  Arnold 

Chapter  I  of  Culture  and  Anarchy,  1869 

THE  disparagers  of  culture  make  its  motive  curiosity; 
sometimes,  indeed,  they  make  its  motive  mere  exclu- 
15  siveness  and  vanity.     The  culture  which  is  supposed  to 


146  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

plume  itself  on  a  smattering  of  Greek  and  Latin  is  a  culture 
which  is  begotten  by  nothing  so  intellectual  as  curiosity; 
it  is  valued  either  out  of  sheer  vanity  and  ignorance,  or  else 
as  an  engine  of  social  and  class  distinction,  separating 
its  holder,  like  a  badge  or  title,  from  other  people  who  5 
have  not  got  it.  No  serious  man  would  call  this  culture^ 
or  attach  any  value  to  it,  as  culture,  at  all.  To  find  the 
real  ground  for  the  very  differing  estimate  which  serious 
people  will  set  upon  culture,  we  must  find  some  motive 
for  culture  in  the  terms  of  which  may  lie  a  real  ambiguity;  10 
and  such  a  motive  the  word  curiosity  gives  us. 

I  have  before  now  pointed  out  that  we  English  do  not, 
like  the  foreigners,  use  this  word  in  a  good  sense  as  well 
as  in  a  bad  sense.  With  us  the  word  is  always  used  in  a 
somewhat  disapproving  sense.  A  liberal  and  intelligent  15 
eagerness  about  the  things  of  the  mind  may  be  meant 
by  a  foreigner  when  he  speaks  of  curiosity,  but  with  us 
the  word  always  conveys  a  certain  notion  of  frivolous  and 
unedifying  activity.  In  the  Quarterly  Review^  some 
little  time  ago,  was  an  estimate  of  the  celebrated  French  20 
critic,  M.  Sainte-Beuve,  and  a  very  inadequate  estimate 
it  in  my  judgment  was.  And  its  inadequacy  consisted 
chiefly  in  this:  that  in  our  English  way  it  left  out  of  sight 
the  double  sense  really  involved  in  the  word  curiosity, 
thinking  enough  was  said  to  stamp  M.  Sainte-Beuve  with  25 
blame  if  it  was  said  that  he  was  impelled  in  his  operations 
as  a  critic  by  curiosity,  and  omitting  either  to  perceive 
that  M.  Sainte-Beuve  himself,  and  many  other  people 
with  him,  would  consider  that  this  was  praiseworthy  and 
not  blameworthy,  or  to  point  out  why  it  ought  really  to  be  30 
accounted  worthy  of  blame  and  not  of  praise.  For,  as 
there  is  a  curiosity  about  intellectual  matters  which  is 
futile  and  merely  a  disease,  so  there  is  certainly  a  curiosity 
— a  desire  after  the  things  of  the  mind  simply  for  their 


EXPOSITION  147 

« 

own  sakes  and  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  them  as  they  are— 
which  is,  in  an  inteUigent  being,  natural  and  laudable. 
Nay,  and  the  very  desire  to  see  things  as  they  are  implies 
a  balance  and  regulation  of  mind  which  is  not  often  at- 
5  tained  without  fruitful  effort,  and  which  is  the  very  op- 
posite of  the  blind  and  diseased  impulse  of  mind  which 
is  what  we  mean  to  blame  when  we  blame  curiosity. 
Montesquieu  says:  "The  first  motive  which  ought  to 
impel  us  to  study  is  the  desire  to  augment  the  excellence 

10  of  our  nature,  and  to  render  an  intelligent  being  yet  more 
intelligent."  This  is  the  true  ground  to  assign  for  the 
genuine  scientific  passion,  however  manifested,  and  for 
culture,  viewed  simply  as  a  fruit  of  this  passion;  and  it  is 

/     a  worthy  ground,  even  though  we  let  the  term  curiosity 

15  stand  to  describe  it. 

But  there  is  of  culture  another  view,  in  which  not  solely 
the  scientific  passion,  the  sheer  desire  to  see  things  as  they 
are,  natural  and  proper  in  an  intelligent  being,  appears 
as  the  ground  of  it.     There  is  a  view  in  which  all  the  love 

zo  of  our  neighbor,  the  impulses  toward  action,  help,  and 
beneficence,  the  desire  for  removing  human  error,  clearing 
human  confusion,  and  diminishing  human  misery,  the 
noble  aspiration  to  leave  the  world  better  and  happier 
than  we  found  it, — motives  eminently  such  as  are  called 

25  social, — come  in  as  part  of  the  grounds  of  culture,  and  tho 
main  and  preeminent  part.  Culture  is,  then,  properly 
described,  not  as  having  its  origin  in  curiosity,  but  as  having 
its  origin  in  the  love  of  perfection;  it  is  a  study  of  perfection. 
It  moves  by  the  force,  not  merely  or  primarily  of  the 

30  scientific  passion  for  pure  knowledge,  but  also  of  the  moral 
and  social  passion  for  doing  good.  As,  in  the  first  view 
of  it,  we  took  for  its  worthy  motto  Montesquieu's  words, 
"To  render  an  intelligent  being  yet  more  intelligent!" 
so,  in  the  second  view  of  it,  there  is  no  better  motto  which 


148  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

it  can  have  than  these  words  of  Bishop  Wilson:     "To 
make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail ! " 

Only,  whereas  the  passion  for  doing  good  is  apt  to  be 
over-hasty  in  determining  what  reason  and  the  will  of 
God  say,  because  its  turn  is  for  acting  rather  than  thinking,  5 
and  it  wants  to  be  beginning  to  act;  and  whereas  it  is  apt 
to  take  its  own  conceptions,  which  proceed  from  its  own 
state  of  development  and  share  in  all  the  imperfections 
and   immaturities   of  this,   for   a   basis   of   action;   what 
distinguishes  culture  is,  that  it  is  possessed  by  the  scientific  10 
passion,  as  well  as  by  the  passion  of  doing  good;  that  it 
demands  worthy  notions  of  reason  and  the  will  of  God, 
and  does  not  readily  suffer  its  own  crude  conceptions  to 
substitute  themselves  for  them.     And  knowing  that  no 
action  or  institution  can  be  salutary  and  stable  which  is   15 
not  based  on  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  it  is  not  so  bent 
on  acting  and  instituting,   even  with  the  great  aim  of 
diminishing   human    error    and    misery    ever   before   its 
thoughts,    but   that   it   can   remember   that   acting   and 
instituting  are  of  little  use,  unless  we  know  how  and  what  20 
we  ought  to  act  and  to  institute. 

This  culture  is  more  interesting  and  more  far-reaching 
than  that  other,  which  is  founded  solely  on  the  scientific 
passion  for  knowing.  But  it  needs  times  of  faith  and 
ardor,  times  when  the  intellectual  horizon  is  opening  and  25 
widening  all  round  us,  to  flourish  in.  And  is  not  the  close 
and  bounded  intellectual  horizon  within  which  we  have 
long  lived  and  moved  now  lifting  up,  and  are  not  new 
lights  finding  free  passage  to  shine  in  upon  us.^  For  a 
long  time  there  was  no  passage  for  them  to  make  their  way  30 
in  upon  us,  and  then  it  was  of  no  use  to  think  of  adapting 
the  world's  action  to  them.  W^here  was  the  hope  of  making 
reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail  among  people  who 
Lad  a  routine  which  they  had  christened  reason  and  the 


EXPOSITION  149 

will  of  God,  in  which  they  were  inextricably  bound,  and 
beyond  which  they  had  no  power  of  looking?  But  now 
the  iron  force  of  adhesion  to  the  old  routine — social, 
political,  religious — has  wonderfully  yielded;  the  iron 
5  force  of  exclusion  of  all  which  is  new  has  wonderfully 
yielded.  The  danger  now  is,  not  that  people  should 
obstinately  refuse  to  allow  anything  but  their  old  routine 
to  pass  for  reason  and  the  will  of  God,  but  either  that 
they  should  allow  some  novelty  or  other  to  pass  for  these 

10  too  easily,  or  else  that  they  should  underrate  the  importance 
of  them  altogether,  and  think  it  enough  to  follow  action 
for  its  own  sake,  without  troubling  themselves  to  make 
reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail  therein.  Now,  then, 
is  the  moment  for  culture  to  be  of  service,  culture  which 

15  believes  in  making  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail; 
believes  in  perfection;  is  the  study  and  pursuit  of  perfection; 
and  is  no  longer  debarred,  by  a  rigid  invincible  exclusion 
of  whatever  is  new,  from  getting  acceptance  for  its  ideas, 
simply  because  they  are  new. 

20       The  moment  this  view  of  culture  is  seized,  the  moment 

it  is  regarded  not  solely  as  the  endeavor  to  see  things  as 

/    they  are,  to  draw  toward  a  knowledge  of  the  universal 

order  which  seems  to  be  intended  and  aimed  at  in  the 

world,  and  which  it  is  a  man's  happiness  to  go  along  with 

25  or  his  misery  to  go  counter  to — to  learn,  in  short,  the  will 
of  God, — the  moment,  I  say,  culture  is  considered  not 
merely  as  the  endeavor  to  see  and  learn  this,  but  as  the 
endeavor,  also,  to  make  it  prevail,  the  moral,  social,  and 
beneficei^  character  of  culture  becomes  manifest.     The 

30  mere  endeavor  to  see  and  learn  the  truth  for  our  own 
personal  satisfaction  is  indeed  a  commencement  for 
making  it  prevail,  a  preparing  the  way  for  this,  which 
always  serves  this,  and  is  wrongly,  therefore,  stamped 
with  blame  absolutely  in  itself  and  not  only  in  its  caricature 


150  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  degeneration.  But  perhaps  it  has  got  stamped  with 
blame  and  disparaged  with  the  dubious  title  of  curiosity 
because,  in  comparison  with  this  wider  endeavor  of  such 
gre^t  and  plain  utility,  it  looks  selfish,  petty  and  unprof- 
itable. 5 

And  religion,  the  greatest  and  most  important  of  the 
efforts  by  which  the  human  race  has  manifested  its  im- 
pulse to  perfect  itself, — religion,  that  voice  of  the  deepest 
human  experience, — does  not  only  enjoin  and  sanction 
the  aim  which  is  the  great  aim  of  culture,  the  aim  of  setting  IC 
ourselves  to  ascertain  what  perfection  is,  and  to  make 
it  prevail;  but  also,  in  determining  generally  in  what 
human  perfection  consists,  religion  comes  to  a  conclusion 
identical  with  that  which  culture, — -seeking  the  deter- 
mination of  this  question  through  all  the  voices  of  human  15 
experience  which  have  been  heard  upon  it,  of  art,  science, 
poetry,  philosophy,  history,  as  well  as  of  religion,  in  order 
to  give  a  greater  fullness  and  certainty  to  its  solution, — 
likewise  reaches.  Religion  says:  The  kingdom  of  God 
is  within  you;  and  culture,  in  like  manner,  places  human  20 
perfection  in  an  internal  condition,  in  the  growth  and 
predominance  of  our  humanity  proper,  as  distinguished 
from  our  animality.  It  places  it  in  the  ever-increasing 
efficacy  and  in  the  general  harmonious  expansion  of  those 
gifts  of  thought  and  feeling  which  make  the  peculiar  25 
dignity,  wealth,  and  happiness  of  human  nature.  As 
I  have  said  on  a  former  occasion :  "  It  is  in  making  endless 
additions  to  itself,  in  the  endless  expansion  of  its  powers, 
in  endless  growth  in  wisdom  and  beauty,  that  the  spirit 
of  the  human  race  finds  its  ideal.  To  reach  this  ideal,  3C 
culture  is  an  indispensable  aid,  and  that  is  the  true  value 
of  culture."  Not  a  having  and  a  resting,  but  a  growing 
and  a  becoming,  is  the  character  of  pei-fection  as  culture 
conceives  it;  and  here,  too,  it  coincides  with  religion. 


EXPOSITION  151 

And  because  men  are  all  members  of  one  great  whole, 
and  the  sympathy  which  is  in  human  nature  will  not  allow 
•  one  member  to  be  indifferent  to  the  rest,  or  to  have  a  perfect 
welfare  independent  of  the  rest,  the  expansion  of  our  human- 
5  ity,  to  suit  the  idea  of  perfection  which  culture  forms,  must 
be  a  gejieral  expansion.  Perfection,  as  culture  conceives 
it,  is  not  possible  while  the  individual  remains  isolated. 
The  individual  is  required,  under  pain  of  being  stunted 
and  enfeebled  in  his  own  development  if  he  disobeys,  to 

10  carry  others  along  with  him  in  his  march  toward  perfection, 
to  be  continually  doing  all  he  can  to  enlarge  and  increase 
the  volume  of  the  human  stream  sweeping  thitherward. 
And  here,  once  more,  culture  lays  on  us  the  same  obligation 
as  religion,  which  says,  as  Bishop  Wilson  has  admirably 

15  put  it,  that  "to  promote  the  kingdom  of  God  is  to  increase 
and  hasten  one's  own  happiness." 

But,  finally,  perfection — as  culture  from  a  thorough,  dis- 
interested study  of  human  nature  and  human  experience 
learns  to  conceive  it — is  a  harmonious  expansion  of  all  the 

20  powers  which  make  the  beauty  and  worth  of  human  nature , 
and  is  not  consistent  with  the  over-development  of  any  one 
power  at  the  expense  of  the  rest.  Here  culture  goes  beyond 
religion,  as  religion  is  generally  conceived  by  us. 

If  culture,  then,  is  a  study  of  perfection,  and  of  har- 

2.5  monious  perfection,  general  perfection,  and  perfection 
which  consists  in  becoming  something  rather  than  in 
having  something,  in  an  inward  condition  of  the  mind 
and  spirit,  not  in  an  outward  set  of  circumstances, — it  is 
clear  that  culture,  instead  of  being  the  frivolous  and  useless 

30  thing  which  Mr.  Bright,  and  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  and 
many  other  Liberals,  are  apt  to  call  it,  has  a  very  important 
function  to  fulfill  for  mankind.  And  this  function  is 
particularly  important  in  our  modern  world,  of  which 
the  whole  civilization  is,  to  a  much  greater  degree  than  the 


152  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

civilization  of  Greece  and  Rome,  mechanical  and  ex- 
ternal, and  tends  constantly  to  become  more  so.  But  above 
all  in  our  own  country  has  culture  a  weighty  part  to  per- 
form, because  here  that  mechanical  character,  which 
civilization  tends  to  take  everywhere,  is  shown  in  the  5 
most  eminent  degree.  Indeed,  nearly  all  the  characters 
of  perfection,  as  culture  teaches  us  to  fix  them,  meet  in 
this  country  with  some  powerful  tendency  which  thwarts 
them  and  sets  them  at  defiance.  The  idea  of  perfection 
as  an  inward  condition  of  the  mind  and  spirit  is  at  variance  10 
with  the  mechanical  and  material  civilization  in  esteem 
with  us,  and  nowhere,  as  I  have  said,  so  much  in  esteem 
as  with  us.  The  idea  of  perfection  as  a  general  expansion 
of  the  human  family  is  at  variance  with  our  strong  in- 
dividualism, our  hatred  of  all  limits  to  the  unrestrained  15 
swing  of  the  individual's  personality,  our  maxim  of  "every 
man  for  himself. "  Above  all,  the  idea  of  perfection  as  a 
harmonious  expansion  of  human  nature  is  at  variance 
with  our  want  of  flexibility,  with  our  inaptitude  for  seeing 
more  than  one  side  of  a  thing,  with  our  intense  energetic  20 
absorption  in  the  particular  pursuit  we  happen  to  be 
following.  So  culture  has  a  rough  task  to  achieve  in  this 
country.  Its  preachers  have,  and  are  likely  long  to  have,  a 
hard  time  of  it;  and  they  will  much  oftener  be  regarded,  for 
a  great  while  to  come,  as  elegant  or  spurious  Jeremiahs,  25 
than  as  friends  and  benefactors.  That,  however,  will  not 
prevent  their  doing,  in  the  end,  good  service  if  they  per- 
severe. And,  meanwhile,  the  mode  of  action  they  have 
to  pursue  and  the  sort  of  habits  they  must  fight  against, 
ought  to  be  made  quite  clear  for  every  one  to  see,  who  30 
may  be  willing  to  look  at  the  matter  attentively  and  dis- 
passionately. 

Faith  in  machinery  is,  I  said,  our  besetting  danger;  often 
in  machinery  most  absurdly  disproportioned  to  the  end 


EXPOSITION  153 

which  this  machinery,  if  it  is  to  do  any  good  at  all,  is  to 
serve;  but  always  in  machinery,  as  if  it  had  a  value  in  and 
for  itself.  What  is  freedom  but  machinery?  What  is 
population  but  machinery?  what  is  coal  but  machinery? 
5  what  are  railroads  but  machinery?  what  is  wealth  but 
machinery?  what  are,  even,  religious  organizations  but 
machinery?  Now  almost  every  voice  in  England  is  ac- 
customed to  speak  of  these  things  as  if  they  were  precious 
ends  in  themselves,  and  therefore  had  some  of  the  characters 

10  of  perfection  indisputably  joined  to  them.  I  have  before 
now  noticed  Mr.  Roebuck's  stock  argument  for  proving 
the  greatness  and  happiness  of  England  as  she  is,  and  for 
quite  stopping  the  mouths  of  all  gainsayers.  Mr.  Roebuck 
is  never  weary  of  reiterating  this  argument  of  his,  so  I  do 

15  not  know  why  I  should  be  weary  of  noticing  it.  *'May 
not  every  man  in  England  say  what  he  likes?"  Mr. 
Roebuck  perpetually  asks;  and  that,  he  thinks,  is  quite 
sufficient,  and  when  every  man  may  say  what  he  likes, 
our  aspirations  ought  to  be  satisfied.     But  the  aspirations 

10  of  culture,  which  is  the  study  of  perfection,  are  not  satisfied 
unless  what  men  say,  when  they  may  say  what  they  like, 
is  worth  saying — has  good  in  it,  and  more  good  than  bad. 
In  the  same  way,  the  Times,  replying  to  some  foreign 
strictures  on  the  dress,  looks,  and  behavior  of  the  English 

?  5  abroad,  urges  that  the  English  ideal  is  that  every  one  should 
be  free  to  do  and  to  look  just  as  he  likes.  But  culture 
indefatigably  tries,  not  to  make  what  each  raw  person 
may  like,  the  rule  by  which  he  fashions  himself;  but  to 
draw  ever  nearer  to  a  sense  of  what  is  indeed  beautiful, 

■0  graceful,  and  becoming,  and  to  get  the  raw  person  to  like 
that. 

And  in  the  same  way  with  respect  to  railroads  and  coal. 
Every  one  must  have  observed  the  strange  language 
current    during   the   late  discussions  as  to  the  possible 


154  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

failure  of  our  supplies  of  coal.  Our  coal,  thousands  of 
people  were  saying,  is  the  real  basis  of  our  national  great- 
ness ;  if  our  coal  runs  short,  there  is  an  end  of  the  greatness 
of  England.  But  what  is  greatness?  culture  makes  us 
ask.  Greatness  is  a  spiritual  condition  worthy  to  excite  5 
love,  interest,  and  admiration;  and  the  outward  proof  of 
possessing  greatness  is  that  we  excite  love,  interest,  and 
admiration.  If  England  were-  swallowed  up  by  the  sea 
to-morrow,  which  of  the  two,  a  hundred  years  hence, 
would  most  excite  the  love,  interest,  and  admiration  of  10 
mankind — would  most,  therefore,  show  evidences  of  having 
possessed  greatness — the  England  of  the  last  twenty 
years,  or  the  England  of  Elizabeth,  of  a  time  of  splendid 
spiritual  effort,  but  when  our  coal,  and  our  industrial 
operations  depending  on  coal,  were  very  little  developed  ?  15 
Well,  then,  what  an  unsound  habit  of  mind  it  must  be 
which  makes  us  talk  of  things  like  coal  or  iron  as  con- 
stituting the  greatness  of  England,  and  how  salutary  a 
friend  is  culture,  bent  on  seeing  things  as  they  are,  and 
thus  dissipating  delusions  of  this  kind  and  fixing  standards  20 
of  perfection  that  are  real ! 

Wealth,  again,  that  end  to  which  our  prodigious  works 
for  material  advantage  are  directed, — the  commonest  of 
commonplaces  tells  us  how  men  are  always  apt  to  regard 
wealth  as  a  precious  end  in  itself;  and  certainly  they  have  25 
never  been  so  apt  thus  to  regard  it  as  they  are  in  England 
at  the  present  time.  Never  did  people  believe  anything 
more  firmly  than  nine  Englishmen  out  of  ten  at  the  present 
day  believe  that  our  greatness  and  welfare  are  proved  by 
our  being  so  very  rich.  Now,  the  use  of  culture  is  that  it  30 
helps  us,  by  means  of  its  spiritual  standard  of  perfection 
to  regard  wealth  as  but  machinery,  and  not  only  to  say  as  a 
matter  of  words  that  we  regard  wealth  as  but  machinery, 
but  really  to  perceive  and  feel  that  it  is  so.     If  it  were  not 


EXPOSITION  155 

for  this  purging  effect  wrought  upon  our  minds  by  culture, 
the  whole  world,  the  future  as  well  as  the  present,  would 
inevitably  belong  to  the  Philistines.  The  people  who 
believe  most  that  our  greatness  and  welfare  are  proved 
5  by  our  beings  very  rich,  and  who  most  give  their  lives  and 
thoughts  to  becoming  rich,  are  just  the  very  people  whom 
we  call  Philistines.  Culture  says :  "  Consider  these  people, 
then,  their  way  of  life,  their  habits,  their  manners,  the 
very  tones  of  their  voice;  look  at  them  attentively;  observe 

10  the  literature  they  read,  the  things  which  give  them  pleasure, 
the  words  which  come  forth  outof  their  mouths,  the  thoughts 
which  make  the  furniture  of  their  minds ;  would  any  amount 
of  wealth  be  worth  having  with  the  condition  that  one  was 
to  become  just  like  these  people  by  having  it?"     And 

15  thus  culture  begets  a  dissatisfaction  which  is  of  the  highest 
possible  value  in  stemming  the  common  tide  of  men's 
thoughts  in  a  wealthy  and  industrial  community,  and 
which  saves  the  future,  as  one  may  hope,  from  being 
vulgarized,  even  if  it  cannot  save  the  present. 

20  Population,  again,  and  bodily  health  and  vigor,  are 
things  which  are  nowhere  treated  in  such  an  unintelligent, 
misleading,  exaggerated  way  as  in  England.  Both  are 
really  machinery;  yet  how  many  people  all  around  us  do 
we  see  rest  in  them  and  fail  to  look  beyond  them!     Why, 

25  one  has  heard  people,  fresh  from  reading  certain  articles 
of  the  Times  on  the  registrar-general's  returns  of  marriages 
and  births  in  this  country,  who  would  talk  of  our  large 
English  families  in  quite  a  solemn  strain,  as  if  they  had 
something  in  itself  beautiful,  elevating,  and  meritorious 

30  in  them,  as  if  the  British  Philistine  would  have  only  to 
present  himself  before  the  Great  Judge,  with  his  twelve 
children,  in  order  to  be  received  among  the  sheep  as  a 
matter  of  right! 

But  bodily  health  and  vigor,  it  may  be  said,  are  not  to  be 


156  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

classed  with  wealth  and  population  as  mere  machinery; 
they  have  a  more  real  and  essential  value.  True;  but 
only  as  they  are  more  intimately  connected  with  a  perfect 
spiritual  condition  than  wealth  or  population  are.  The 
moment  we  disjoin  them  from  the  idea  of  a  perfect  spiritual  5 
condition,  and  pursue  them,  as  we  do  pursue  them,  for 
their  own  sake  and  as  ends  in  themselves,  our  worship  of 
them  becomes  as  mere  worship  of  machinery,  as  our 
worship  of  wealth  or  population,  and  as  unintelligent  and 
vulgarizing  a  worship  as  that  is.  Every  one  with  anything  lo 
like  an  adequate  idea  of  human  perfection  has  distinctly 
marked  this  subordination  to  higher  and  spiritual  ends 
of  the  cultivation  of  bodily  vigor  and  activity.  "Bodily 
exercise  profiteth  little;  but  godliness  is  profitable  unto  all 
things,  *'  says  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  Timothy.  And  15 
the  utilitarian  Franklin  says,  just  as  explicitly:  "Eat 
and  drink  such  an  exact  quantity  as  suits  the  constitution 
of  thy  body,  in  reference  to  the  services  oftJie  miiid.''  But 
the  point  of  view  of  culture,  keeping  the  mark  of  human 
perfection  simply  and  broadly  in  view,  and  not  assigning  20 
to  this  perfection,  as  religion  or  utilitarianism  assigns  to  it, 
a  special  and  limited  character — this  point  of  view,  I  say, 
of  culture  is  best  given  by  these  words  of  Epictetus:  "It 
is  a  sign  of  acpvia,''  says  he, — that  is,  of  a  nature  not 
finely  tempered, —  "to  give  yourselves  upvto  things  which  25 
relate  to  the  body;  to  make,  for  instance,  a  great  fuss 
about  exercise,  a  great  fuss  about  eating,  a  great  fuss  about 
drinking,  a  great  fuss  about  walking,  a  great  fuss  about 
riding.  All  these  things  ought  to  be  done  merely  by  the 
way ;  the  formation  of  the  spirit  and  character  must  be  our  30 
real  concern."  This  is  admirable;  and,  indeed,  the 
Greek  word  ev<l>via,  a  finely  tempered  nature,  gives 
exactly  the  notion  of  perfection  as  culture  brings  us  to 
conceive  it:  a  harmonious  perfection,  a  perfection  in  which 


EXPOSITION  157 

the  characters  of  beauty  and  intelligence  are  both  present, 
which  unites  "the  two  noblest  of  things," — as  Swift,  who 
of  one  of  the  two,  at  any  rate,  had  himself  all  too  little, 
most   happily    calls  them  in   his   Battle    of  the   Books — 

5  "the  two  noblest  of  things,  sweetness  and  light.''  The 
€v0vr}<;  is  the  man  who  tends  toward  sweetness  and 
light;  the  d(pv7/s,  on  the  other  hand,  is  our  Philistine. 
The  immense  spiritual  significance  of  the  Greeks  is  due 
to  their  having  been  inspired  with  this  central  and  happy 

10  idea  of  the  essential  character  of  human  perfection;  and 
Mr.  Bright 's  misconception  of  culture,  as  a  smattering  of 
Greek  and  Latin,  comes  itself,  after  all,  from  this  wonder- 
ful significance  of  the  Greeks  having  affected  the  very 
machinery  of  our  education,  and  is  in  itself  a  kind  of 

15  homage  to  it. 

In  thus  making  sweetness  and  light  to  be  characters 
of  perfection,  culture  is  of  like  spirit  with  poetry,  follows 
one  law  with  poetry.  Far  more  than  on  our  freedom, 
our  population,  and  our  industrialism,  many  among  us 

20  rely  upon  our  religious  organizations  to  save  us.  I  have 
called  religion  a  yet  more  important  manifestation  of 
human  nature  than  poetry,  because  it  has  worked  on  a 
broader  scale  for  perfection,  and  with  greater  masses  of 
men.     But  the  idea  of  beauty  and  of  a  human  nature 

25  perfect  on  all  its  sides,  which  is  the  dominant  idea  of 
poetry,  is  a  true  and  invaluable  idea,  though  it  has  not  yet 
had  the  success  that  the  idea  of  conquering  the  obvious 
faults  of  our  animality,  and  of  a  human  nature  perfect 
on  the  moral  side — which  is  the  dominant  idea  of  religion — 

30  has  been  enabled  to  have;  and  it  is  destined,  adding  to 
itself  the  religious  idea  of  a  devout  energy,  to  transform 
and  govern  the  other. 

The  best  art  and  poetry  of  the  Greeks,  in  which  religion 
and  poetry  are  one,  in  which  the  idea  of  beauty  and  of  a  hu- 


158  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

man  nature  perfect  on  all  sides  adds  to  itself  .a  religious  and 
devout  energy,  and  works  in  the  strength  of  that,  is  on 
this  account  of  such  surpassing  interest  and  instructive- 
ness  for  us,  though  it  was — as,  having  regard  to  the  human 
race  in  general,  and  indeed  having  regard  to  the  Greeks  5 
themselves,  we  must  own — a  premature  attempt,  an 
attempt  which  for  success  needed  the  moral  and  religious 
fiber  in  humanity  to  be  more  braced  and  developed  than 
it  had  yet  been.  But  Greece  did  not  err  in  having  the 
idea  of  beauty,  harmony,  and  complete  human  perfection,  10 
so  present  and  paramount.  It  is  impossible  to  have  this 
idea  too  present  and  paramount;  only,  the  moral  fiber 
must  be  braced  too.  And  we,  because  we  have  braced 
the  moral  fiber,  are  not  on  that  account  in  the  right  way, 
if  at  the  same  time  the  idea  of  beauty,  harmony,  and  15 
complete  human  perfection  is  wanting  or  misapprehended 
among  us ;  and  evidently  it  is  wanting  or  misapprehended 
at  present.  And  when  we  rely  as  we  do  on  our  religious 
organizations,  which  in  themselves  do  not  and  cannot  give 
us  this  idea,  and  think  we  have  done  enough  if  we  make  20 
them  spread  and  prevail,  then,  I  say,  we  fall  into  our 
common  fault  of  over-valuing  machinery. 

Nothing  is  more  common  than  for  people  to  confound  the 
inward  peace  and  satisfaction  which  follows  the  subduing 
of  the  obvious  faults  of  our  animality  with  what  I  may  call  i,* 
absolute  inward  peace  and  satisfaction — the  peace  and 
satisfaction  which  are  reached  as  we  draw  near  to  com- 
plete spiritual  perfection,  and  not  merely  to  moral  perfection 
or  rather  to  relative  moral  perfection.  No  people  in  the 
world  have  done  more  and  struggled  more  to  attain  this  30 
relative  moral  perfection  than  our  English  race  has. 
For  no  people  in  the  world  has  the  command  to  resist 
the  devil,  to  overcome  tJie  wicked  one,  in  the  nearest  and 
most  obvious  sense  of  those  words,  had  such  a  pressing 


EXPOSITION  159 

force  and  reality.  And  we  have  had  our  reward,  not 
only  in  the  great  worldly  prosperity  which  our  obedience 
to  this  command  has  brought  us,  but  also,  and  far  more, 
in  great  inward  peace  and  satisfaction.  But  to  me  few 
5  things  are  more  pathetic  than  to  see  people,  on  the  strength 
of  the  inward  peace  and  satisfaction  which  their  rudi- 
mentary efforts  toward  perfection  have  brought  them, 
employ,  concerning  their  incomplete  perfection  and  the 
religious  organizations  within  which  they  have  found  it, 

10  language  which  properly  applies  only  to  complete  perfection 
and  is  a  far-off  echo  of  the  human  soul's  prophecy  of  it. 
Religion  itself,  I  need  hardly  say,  supplies  them  in  abun- 
dance with  this  grand  language.  And  very  freely  do  they 
use  it;  yet  it  is  really  the  severest  possible  criticism  of  such 

15  an  incomplete  perfection  as  alone  we  have  yet  reached 
through  our  religious  organizations. 

The  impulse  of  the  English  race  toward  moral  develop- 
ment and  self-conquest  has  nowhere  so  powerfully  man- 
ifested itself  as  in  Puritanism.     Nowhere  has  Puritanism 

20  found  so  adequate  an  expression  as  in  the  religious  or- 
ganization of  the  Independents.  The  modern  Independents 
have  a  newspaper,  the  Nonconformist,  written  with  great 
sincerity  and  ability.  The  motto,  the  standard,  the  pro- 
fession of  faith,  which  this  organ  of  theirs  carries  aloft, 

25  is:  "The  Dissidence  of  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of 
the  Protestant  religion."  There  is  sweetness  and  light, 
and  an  ideal  of  complete  harmonious  human  perfection! 
One  need  not  go  to  culture  and  poetry  to  find  language 
to   judge   it.     Religion,   with  its   instinct  for  perfection, 

30  supplies  language  to  judge  it, — language,  too,  which  is 
in  our  mouths  every  day.  "Finally,  be  of  one  mind, 
united  in  feeling,*'  says  St.  Peter.  There  is  an  ideal 
which  judges  the  Puritan  ideal:  "The  Dissidence  of 
Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion ! " 


160  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

And  religious  organizations  like  this  are  what  people 
believe  in,  rest  in,  would  give  their  lives  for!  Such,  I 
say,  is  the  wonderful  virtue  of  even  the  beginnings  of 
perfection,  of  having  conquered  even  the  plain  faults 
of  our  animality,  that  the  religious  organization  which  5 
has  helped  us  to  do  it  can  seem  to  us  something  precious, 
salutary,  and  to  be  propagated,  even  when  it  wears  such 
a  brand  of  imperfection  on  its  forehead  as  this.  And 
men  have  got  such  a  habit  of  giving  to  the  language  of 
religion  a  special  application,  of  making  it  a  mere  jargon,  10 
that  for  the  condemnation  which  religion  itself  passes  on 
the  shortcomings  of  their  religious  organizations  they 
have  no  ear;  they  are  sure  to  cheat  themselves  and  to 
explain  this  condemnation  away.  They  can  only  be  reached 
by  the  criticism  which  culture,  like  poetry,  speaking  a  15 
language  not  to  be  sophisticated,  and  resolutely  testing 
organizations  by  the  ideal  of  a  human  perfection  complete 
on  all  sides,  applies  to  them. 

But  men  of  culture  and  poetry,  it  will  be  said,  are  again 
and  again  failing,  and  failing  conspicuously,  in  the  necessary  '^0 
first  stage  to  a  harmonious  perfection,  in  the  subduing 
of  the  great  obvious  faults  of  our  animality,  which  it  is 
the  glory  of  these  religious  organizations  to  have  helped 
us  to  subdue.  True,  they  do  often  so  fail.  They  have 
often  been  without  the  virtues,  as  well  as  the  faults,  of  the  'i5 
Puritan ;  it  has  been  one  of  their  dangers,  that  they  so  felt 
the  Puritan's  faults  that  they  too  much  neglected  the 
practice  of  his  virtues.  I  will  not,  however,  exculpate 
them  at  the  Puritan's  expense.  They  have  often  failed  in 
morality,  and  morality  is  indispensable.  And  they  have  been  30 
punished  for  their  failure,  as  the  Puritan  has  been  rewarded 
for  his  performance.  They  have  been  punished  wherein 
they  erred ;  but  their  ideal  of  beauty,  of  sweetness  and  light, 
and  a  human  nature  complete  on  all  its  sides,  remains 


EXPOSITION  161 

the  true  ideal  of  perfection  still;  just  as  the  Puritan's  ideal 
of  perfection  remains  narrow  and  inadequate,  although 
for  what  he  did  well  he  has  been  richly  rewarded.  Not- 
withstanding the  mighty  results  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers' 

5  voyage,  they  and  their  standard  of  perfection  are  rightly 
judged  when  we  figure  to  ourselves  Shakespeare  or  Virgil — 
souls  in  whom  sweetness  and  light,  and  all  that  in  human 
nature  is  most  humane,  were  eminent — accompanying 
them  on  their  voyage,  and  think  what  intolerable  company 

10  Shakespeare  and  Virgil  would  have  found  them!  In  the 
same  way  let  us  judge  the  religious  organizations  which 
we  will  see  all  around  us.  Do  not  let  us  deny  the  good 
and  the  happiness  which  they  have  accomplished;  but  do 
not  let  us  fail  to  see  clearly  that  their  idea  of  human  per- 

15  fection  is  narrow  and  inadequate,  and  that  the  Dissidence 
of  Dissent  and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion 
will  never  bring  humanity  to  its  true  goal.  As  I  said  with 
regard  to  wealth:  Let  us  look  at  the  life  of  those  who  live 
in  and  for  it, — so  I  say  with  regard  to  the  religious  or- 

20  ganizations.  Look  at  the  life  imaged  in  such  a  newspaper 
as  the  Nonconformist — a  life  of  jealousy  of  the  Establish- 
ment, disputes,  tea-meetings,  openings  of  chapels,  sermons ; 
and  then  think  of  it  as  an  ideal  of  a  human  life  com- 
pleting itself  on  all  sides,  and  aspiring  with  all  its  organs 

25   after  sweetness,  light,  and  perfection ! 

Another  newspaper,  representing,  like  the  Noncon- 
formist, one  of  the  religious  organizations  of  this  country, 
was  a  short  time  ago  giving  an  account  of  the  crowd  at 
Epsom  on  the  Derby  Day,  and  of  all  the  vice  and  hideous- 

30  ness  which  was  to  be  seen  in  that  crowd:  and  then  the 
writer  turned  suddenly  round  upon  Professor  Huxley  and 
asked  him  how  he  proposed  to  cure  all  this  vice  and 
hideousness  without  religion.  I  confess  I  felt  disposed  to 
ask  the  asker  this  question:    And  how  do  you  propose  to 


162  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

cure  it  with  such  a  rehgion  as  yours  ?  How  is  the  ideal 
of  a  life  so  unlovely,  so  unattractive,  so  incomplete,  so 
narrow,  so  far  removed  from  a  true  and  satisfying  ideal 
of  human  perfection,  as  is  the  life  of  your  religious  organiza- 
tion as  you  yourself  reflect  it,  to  conquer  and  transform  5 
all  this  vice  and  hideousness?  Indeed,  the  strongest 
plea  for  the  study  of  perfection  as  pursued  by  culture, 
the  clearest  proof  of  the  actual  inadequacy  of  the  idea  of 
perfection  held  by  the  religious  organizations, — express- 
ing, as  I  have  said,  the  most  wide-spread  effort  which  the  10 
human  race  has  yet  made  after  perfection, — is  to  be  found 
in  the  state  of  our  life  and  society  with  these  in  possession 
of  it,  and  having  been  in  possession  of  it  I  know  not  how 
many  hundred  years.  We  are  all  of  us  included  in  some 
religious  organization  or  other;  we  all  call  ourselves,  in  15 
the  sublime  and  aspiring  language  of  religion  which  I 
have  before  noticed,  children  of  God.  Children  of  God ! 
It  is  an  immense  pretension ;  and  how  are  we  to  justify  it  ? 
By  the  works  which  we  do,  and  the  words  which  we  speak. 
And  the  work  which  we  collective  children  of  God  do,  20 
our  grand  center  of  life,  our  city  which  we  have  builded 
for  us  to  dwell  in,  is  London!  London,  with  its  unuttera- 
ble external  hideousness,  and  with  its  internal  canker  of 
publice  egestas,  privatim  opulentia,  —  to  use  the  words 
which  Sallust  puts  into  Cato's  mouth  about  Rome, —  25 
unequaled  in  the  world!  The  word,  again,  which  we 
children  of  God  speak,  the  voice  which  most  hits  our 
collective  thought,  the  newspaper  with  the  largest  circula- 
tion in  England,  nay,  with  the  largest  circulation  in  the 
whole  world,  is  the  Daily  Telegraph!  I  say  that  when  our  30 
religious  organizations — which  I  admit  to  express  the 
most  considerable  effort  after  perfection  that  our  race 
has  yet  made — land  us  in  no  better  result  than  this,  it  is 
high  time  to  examine  carefully  their  idea  of  perfection, 


EXPOSITION  163 

to  see  whether  it  does  not  leave  out  of  account  sides  and 
forces  of  human  nature  which  we  might  turn  to  great  use; 
whether  it  would  not  be  more  operative  if  it  were  more 
complete.     And  I  say  that  the  English  reliance  on  our 

5  religious  organizations,  and  on  their  ideas  of  human  per- 
fection just  as  they  stand,  is  like  our  reliance  on  freedom, 
on  muscular  Christianity,  on  population,  on  coal,  on  wealth, 
— mere  belief  in  machinery,  and  unfruitful  i  and  that  it  is 
wholesomely    counteracted    by    culture,    bent    on    seeing 

10  things  as  they  are,  and  on  drawing  the  human  race  onward 
to  a  more  complete,  a  harmonious  perfection. 

Culture,  however,  shows  its  single-minded  love  of  per- 
fection, its  desire  simply  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of 
God  prevail,  its  freedom  from  fanaticism,  by  its  attitude 

15  toward  all  this  machinery,  even  while  it  insists  that  it 
is  machinery.  Fanatics,  seeing  the  mischief  men  do  them- 
selves by  their  blind  belief  in  some  machinery  or  other, — 
whether  it  is  wealth  and  industrialism,  or  whether  it  is 
the  cultivation  of  bodily  strength  and  activity,  or  whether 

20  it  is  a  political  organization,  or  whether  it  is  a  religious 
organization, — oppose  with  might  and  main  the  tendency 
to  this  or  that  political  and  religious  organization,  or  to 
games  and  athletic  exercises,  or  to  wealth  and  industrial- 
ism, and  try  violently  to  stop  it.     But  the  flexibility  which 

25  sweetness  and  light  give,  and  which  is  one  of  the 
rewards  of  culture  pursued  in  good  faith,  enables  a  man 
to  see  that  a  tendency  may  be  necessary,  and  even, 
as  a  preparation  for  something  in  the  future,  salutary, 
and  yet  that  the  generations    or   individuals   who   obey 

30  this  tendency  are  sacrificed  to  it;  that  they  fall  short 
of  the  hope  of  perfection  by  following  it;  and  that  its 
mischiefs  are  to  be  criticized,  lest  it  should  take  too  firm 
a  hold  and  last  after  it  has  served  its  purpose. 

Mr.  Gladstone  well  pointed  out,  in  a  speech  at  Paris, — 


164  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  others  have  pointed  out  the  same  thing, — how  neces- 
sary is  the  present  great  movement  toward  wealth  and  in- 
dustriaHsm,  in  order  to  lay  broad  foundations  of  material 
well-being  for  the  society  of  the  future.  The  worst  of 
these  justifications  is  that  they  are  generally  addressed  to  5 
the  very  people  engaged,  body  and  soul,  in  the  movement 
in  question;  at  all  events,  that  they  are  always  seized 
with  the  greatest  avidity  by  these  people,  and  taken 
by  them  as  quite  justifying  their  life;  and  that  thus  they 
tend  to  harden  them  in  their  sins.  Now,  culture  admits  10 
the  necessity  of  the  movement  toward  fortune-making  and 
exaggerated  industrialism,  readily  allows  that  the  future 
may  derive  benefit  from  it;  but  insists,  at  the  same  time, 
that  the  passing  generations  of  industrialists — ^forming, 
for  the  most  part,  the  stout  main  body  of  Philistinism —  15 
are  sacrificed  to  it.  In  the  same  way,  the  result  of  all  the 
games  and  sports  which  occupy  the  passing  generation 
of  boys  and  young  men  may  be  the  establishment  of  a 
better  and  sounder  physical  type  for  the  future  to  work 
with.  Culture  does  not  set  itself  against  the  games  and  20 
sports;  it  congratulates  the  future,  and  hopes  it  will  make  a 
good  use  of  its  improved  physical  basis;  but  it  points  out 
that  our  passing  generation  of  boys  and  young  men  is, 
meantime,  sacrificed.  Puritanism  was  perhaps  necessary 
to  develop  the  moral  fiber  of  the  English  race.  Noncon-  25 
formity,  to  break  the  yoke  of  ecclesiastical  domination  over 
men's  minds  and  to  prepare  the  way  for  freedom  of  thought 
in  the  distant  future;  still,  culture  points  out  that  the  har- 
monious perfection  of  generations  of  Puritans  and  Noncon- 
formists has  been,  in  consequence,  sacrificed.  Freedom  30 
of  speech  may  be  necessary  for  the  society  of  the  future, 
but  the  young  lions  of  the  Daily  Telegraph  in  the  mean- 
while are  sacrificed.  A  voice  for  every  man  in  his  country's 
government  may  be  necessary  for  the  society  of  the  future, 


EXPOSITION  165 

but  meanwhile  Mr.Beales  and  Mr.  Bradlaugh  are  sacrificed. 
Oxford,  the  Oxford  of  the  past,  has  many  faults;  and  she 
has  heavily  paid  for  them  in  defeat,  in  isolation,  in  want 
of  hold  upon  the  modern  world.  Yet  we  in  Oxford, 
5  brought  up  amidst  the  beauty  and  sweetness  of  that  beauti- 
ful place,  have  not  failed  to  seize  one  truth — the  truth 
that  beauty  and  sweetness  are  essential  characters  of  a 
complete  human  perfection.  When  I  insist  on  this,  I 
am  all  in  the  faith  and  tradition  of  Oxford.     I  say  boldly 

10  that  this  our  sentiment  for  beauty  and  sweetness,  our 
sentiment  against  hideousness  and  rawness,  has  been  at 
the  bottom  of  our  attachment  to  so  many  beaten  causes, 
of  our  opposition  to  so  many  triumphant  movements. 
And  the  sentiment  is  true,    and  has  never  been  wholly 

15  defeated,  and  has  shown  its  power  even  in  its  defeat. 
We  have  not  won  our  political  battles,  we  have  not  carried 
our  main  points,  we  have  not  stopped  our  adversaries' 
advance,  we  have  not  marched  victoriously  with  the 
modern  world;  but  we  have  told  silently  upon  the  mind  of 

20  the  country,  we  have  prepared  currents  of  feeling  which 
sap  our  adversaries'  position  when  it  seems  gained,  we 
have  kept  up  our  own  communications  with  the  future. 
Look  at  the  course  of  the  great  movement  which  shook 
Oxford    to    its    center    some   thirty   years    ago !     It    was 

25  directed,  as  any  one  who  reads  Dr.  Newman's  Apology 
may  see,  against  what  in  one  word  may  be  called  "Liberal- 
ism."  Liberalism  prevailed;  it  was  the  appointed  force 
to  do  the  work  of  the  hour;  it  was  necessary,  it  was  in- 
evitable that  it  should  prevail.     The  Oxford  movement 

30  was  broken,  it  failed;  our  wrecks  are  scattered  on  every 
shore: 

Quse  regio  in  terris  nostri  non  plena  laboris? 

But  what  was  it,  this  liberalism,  as  Dr.  Newman  saw  it, 


166  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  as  it  really  broke  the  Oxford  movement  ?  It  was  the 
great  middle-class  liberalism,  which  had  for  the  cardinal 
points  of  its  belief  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832,  and  local  self- 
government,  in  politics;  in  the  social  sphere,  free-trade, 
unrestricted  competition,  and  the  making  of  large  industrial  5 
fortunes;  in  the  religious  sphere,  the  Dissidence  of  Dissent 
and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion.  I  do 
not  say  that  other  and  more  intelligent  forces  than  this 
were  not  opposed  to  the  Oxford  movement:  but  this  was 
the  force  which  really  beat  it;  this  was  the  force  which  10 
Dr.  Newman  felt  himself  fighting  with;  this  was  the  force 
which  till  only  the  other  day  seemed  to  be  the  paramount 
force  in  this  country,  and  to  be  in  possession  of  the  future; 
this  was  the  force  whose  achievements  fill  Mr.  Lowe 
with  such  inexpressible  admiration,  and  whose  rule  15 
he  was  so  horror-struck  to  see  threatened.  And  where 
is  this  great  force  of  Philistinism  now?  It  is  thrust  into 
the  second  rank,  it  is  become  a  power  of  yesterday,  it  has 
lost  the  future.  A  new  power  has  suddenly  appeared,  a 
power  which  it  is  impossible  yet  to  judge  fully,  but  which  20 
is  certainly  a  wholly  different  force  from  middle-class 
liberalism;  different  in  its  cardinal  points  of  belief,  different 
in  its  tendencies  in  every  sphere.  It  loves  and  admires 
neither  the  legislation  of  middle-class  Parliaments,  nor 
the  local  self-government  of  middle-class  vestries,  nor  the  25 
unrestricted  competition  of  middle-class  industrialists, 
nor  the  dissidence  of  middle-class  Dissent  and  the  Pro- 
testantism of  middle-class  Protestant  religion.  I  am  not 
now  praising  this  new  force,  or  saying  that  its  own  ideals 
are  better;  all  I  say  is,  that  they  are  wholly  different.  30 
And  who  will  estimate  how  much  the  currents  of  feeling 
created  by  Dr.  Newman*s  movements,  the  keen  desire 
for  beauty  and  sweetness  which  it  nourished,  the  deep 
aversion  it  manifested  to  the  hardness  and  vulgarity  of 


EXPOSITION  167 

middle-class  liberalism,  the  strong  light  it  turned  on  the 
hideous  and  grotesque  illusions  of  middle-class  Protestant- 
ism,— ^who  will  estimate  how  much  all  these  contributed 
to  swell  the  tide  of  secret  dissatisfaction  which  has  mined 
5  the  ground  under  the  self-confident  liberalism  of  the  last 
thirty  years,  and  has  prepared  the  way  for  its  sudden 
collapse  and  supersession  ?  It  is  in  this  manner  that  the 
sentiment  of  Oxford  for  beauty  and  sweetness  conquers, 
and  in  this  manner  long  may  it  continue  to  conquer! 

10  In  this  manner  it  works  to  the  same  end  as  culture,  and 
there  is  plenty  of  work  for  it  yet  to  do.  I  have  said  that 
the  new  and  more  democratic  force  which  is  now  super- 
seding our  old  middle-class  liberalism  cannot  yet  be  rightly 
judged.      It  has  its  main  tendencies  still  to  form.      We 

15  hear  promises  of  its  giving  us  administrative  reform,  law 
reform,  reform  of  education,  and  I  know  not  what;  but  those 
promises  come  rather  from  its  advocates,  wishing  to  make 
a  good  plea  for  it,  and  to  justify  it  for  superseding  middle- 
class  liberalism,  than  from  clear  tendencies  which  it  has 

20  itself  yet  developed.  But  meanwhile  it  has  plenty  of  well- 
intentioned  friends  against  whom  culture  may  with  ad- 
vantage continue  to  uphold  steadily  its  ideal  of  human 
perfection;  that  this  is  an  inward  spiritual  activity y  having 
for    its    characters    increased    sweetness,    increased    light, 

25  increased  life,  increased  sympathy.  Mr.  Bright,  who  has 
a  foot  in  both  worlds,  the  world  of  middle-class  liberalism 
and  the  world  of  democracy,  but  who  brings  most  of  his 
ideas  from  the  world  of  middle-class  liberalism  in  which 
he  was  bred,  always  inclines  to  inculcate  that  faith  in  ma- 

30  chinery  to  which,  as  we  have  seen.  Englishmen  are  so 
prone,  and  which  has  been  the  bane  of  middle-class 
liberalism.  He  complains  with  a  sorrowful  indignation 
of  people  who  "appear  to  have  no  proper  estimate  of  the 
value  of  the  franchise;"  he  leads  his  disciples  to  believe, — 


168  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

what  the  EngHshman  is  always  too  ready  to  believe, — 
that  the  having  a  vote,  like  the  having  a  large  family,  or  a 
large  business,  or  large  muscles,  has  in  itself  some  edifying 
and  perfecting  effect  upon  human  nature.  Or  else  he 
cries  out  to  the  democracy, — "the  men,"  as  he  calls  5 
them,  "upon  whose  shoulders  the  greatness  of  England 
rests," — he  cries  out  to  them:  "See  what  you  have  done! 
I  look  over  this  country  and  see  the  cities  you  have  built, 
the  railroads  you  have  made,  the  manufactures  you  have 
produced,  the  cargoes  which  freight  the  ships  of  the  greatest  10 
mercantile  navy  the  world  has  ever  seen!  I  see  that  you 
have  converted  by  your  labors  what  was  once  a  wilderness, 
these  islands,  into  a  fruitful  garden ;  I  know  that  you  have 
created  this  wealth,  and  are  a  nation  whose  name  is  a  word 
of  power  throughout  all  the  world."  Why,  this  is  just  15 
the  very  style  of  laudation  with  which  Mr.  Roebuck  or 
Mr.  Lowe  debauch  the  minds  of  the  middle  classes,  and 
make  such  Philistines  of  them.  It  is  the  same  fashion 
of  teaching  a  man  to  value  himself  not  on  what  he  is,  not 
on  his  progress  in  sweetness  and  light,  but  on  the  number  20 
of  the  railroads  he  has  constructed,  or  the  bigness  of  the 
tabernacle  he  has  built.  Only  the  middle  classes  are  told 
they  have  done  it  all  with  their  energy,  self-reliance,  and 
capital,  and  the  democracy  are  told  they  have  done  it  all 
with  their  hands  and  sinews.  But  teaching  the  democracy  25 
to  put  its  trust  in  achievements  of  this  kind  is  merely 
training  them  to  be  Philistines  to  take  the  place  of  the 
Philistines  whom  they  are  superseding;  and  they  too,  like 
the  middle  class,  will  be  encouraged  to  sit  down  at  the 
banquet  of  the  future  without  having  on  a  wedding  gar-  30 
ment,  and  nothing  excellent  can  then  come  from  them. 
Those  who  know  their  besetting  faults,  those  who  have 
watched  them  and  listened  to  them,  or  those  who  will 
read  the  instructive  account  recently  given  of  them  by 


EXPOSITION  169 

one  of  themselves,  the  Journeyman  Engineer,  will  agree 
that  the  idea  which  culture  sets  before  us  of  perfection, — 
an  increased  spiritual  activity,  having  for  its  characters 
increased  sweetness,  increased  light,  increased  life,  in- 
5  creased  sympathy, — is  an  idea  which  the  new  democracy 
needs  far  more  than  the  idea  of  the  blessedness  of  the 
franchise,  or  the  wonderfulness  of  its  own  industrial 
performances. 

Other  well-meaning  friends  of  this  new  power  are  for 

10  leading  it,  not  in  the  old  ruts  of  middle-class  Philistinism, 
but  in  ways  which  are  naturally  alluring  to  the  feet  of 
democracy,  though  in  this  country  they  are  novel  and 
untried  ways.  I  may  call  them  the  ways  of  Jacobinism. 
Violent   indignation  with   the   past,    abstract   systems  of 

15  renovation  applied  wholesale,  a  new  doctrine  drawn  up 
in  black  and  white  for  elaborating  down  to  the  very  smallest 
details  a  rational  society  for  the  future, — these  are  the 
ways  of  Jacobinism.  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  and  other 
disciples  of  Comte, — one  of  them,  Mr.  Congreve,  is  an 

20  old  acquaintance  of  mine,  and  I  am  glad  to  have  an  op- 
portunity of  publicly  expressing  my  respect  for  his  talents 
and  character, — are  among  the  friends  of  democracy  who 
are  for  leading  it  in  paths  of  this  kind.  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  is  very  hostile  to  culture,  and  from  a  natural 

25  enough  motive;  for  culture  is  the  eternal  opponent  of  the 
two  things  which  are  the  signal  marks  of  Jacobinism, — 
its  fierceness,  and  its  addiction  to  an  abstract  system. 
Culture  is  always  assigning  to  system-makers  and  systems 
a  smaller  share  in  the  bent  of  human  destiny  than  their 

30  friends  like.  A  current  in  people's  minds  sets  toward  new 
ideas;  people  are  dissatisfied  with  their  old  narrow  stock 
of  Philistine  ideas,  Anglo-Saxon  ideas,  or  any  other;  and 
some  man,  some  Bentham  or  Comte,  who  has  the  real 
merit  of  having  early  and  strongly  felt  and  helped  the 


170  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

new  current,  but  who  brings  plenty  of  narrowness  and 
mistakes  of  his  own  into  his  feeling  and  help  of  it,  is  credited 
with  being  the  author  of  the  whole  current,  the  fit  person 
to  be  trusted  with  its  regulation  and  to  guide  the  human 
race.  5 

The  excellent  German  historian  of  the  mythology  of 
Rome,  Preller,  relating  the  introduction  at  Rome,  under 
the  Tarquins,  of  the  worship  of  Apollo,  the  god  of  light, 
healing,  and  reconciliation,  will  have  us  observe  that  it 
was  not  so  much  the  Tarquins,  who  brought  to  Rome  K 
the  new  worship  of  Apollo,  as  a  current  in  the  mind  of 
the  Roman  people  which  set  powerfully  at  that  time 
toward  a  new  worship  of  this  kind,  and  away  from  the 
old  run  of  Latin  and  Sabine  religious  ideas.  In  a  similar 
way,  culture  directs  our  attention  to  the  natural  current  U 
there  is  in  human  affairs,  and  to  its  continual  working,  and 
will  not  let  us  rivet  our  faith  U|>on  any  one  man  and  his 
doings.  It  makes  us  see,  not  only  his  good  side,  but  also 
how  much  in  him  was  of  necessity  limited  and  transient ; 
nay,  it  even  feels  a  pleasure,  a  sense  of  an  increased  «C 
freedom  and  of  an  ampler  future,  in  so  doing. 

I  remember,  when  I  was  under  the  influence  of  a  mind 
to  which  I  feel  the  greatest  obligations,  the  mind  of  a 
man  who  was  the  very  incarnation  of  sanity  and  clear 
sense,  a  man  the  most  considerable,  it  seems  to  me,  whom  i5 
America  has  yet  prcnluced, — Benjamin  Franklin, — I 
remember  the  relief  with  which,  after  long  feeling  the 
sway  of  Franklin's  imperturbable  common  sense,  I  came 
upon  a  project  of  his  for  a  new  version  of  the  Book  of 
Job,  to  replace  the  old  version,  the  style  of  which,  says  30 
Franklin,  has  become  obsolete,  and  thence  less  agreeable. 
**I  give,'*  he  continues,  **a  few  verses,  which  may  serve 
as  a  sample  of  the  kind  of  version  I  would  recommend. " 
We   all   recollect   the   famous   verse   in   our   translation: 


EXPOSITION  171 

"Then  Satan  answered  the  Lord  and  said:  *Doth  Job 
fear  God  for  naught?*"  Franklin  makes  this:  "Does 
Your  Majesty  imagine  that  Job's  good  conduct  is  the 
eflFect  of  mere  personal  attachment  and  affection?"  I 
5  well  remember  how,  when  first  I  read  that,  I  drew  a  deep 
breath  of  relief,  and  said  to  myself:  "After  all,  there  is  a 
stretch  of  humanity  beyond  Franklin's  victorious  good 
sense!"  So,  after  hearing  Bentham  cried  loudly  up  as 
the  renovator  of  modern  society,  and  Bentham's  mind 

10  and  ideas  proposed  as  the  rules  of  our  future,  I  open  the 
Deontology.  There  I  read :  "While  Xenophon  was  writing 
his  history  and  Euclid  teaching  geometry,  Socrates  and 
Plato  were  talking  nonsense  under  pretense  of  talking 
wisdom    and    morality.     This    morality    of    theirs    con- 

15  sisted  in  words;  this  wisdom  of  theirs  was  the  denial  of 
matters  known  to  every  man's  experience. "  From  the  mo- 
ment of  reading  that,  I  am  delivered  from  the  bondage  of 
Bentham!  the  fanaticism  of  his  adherents  can  touch  me 
no  longer.     I  feel  the  inadequacy  of  his  mind  and  ideas 

20  for  supplying  the  rule  of  human  society  for  perfection. 

Culture  tends  always  thus  to  deal  with  the  men  of  a 
system,  of  disciples,  of  a  school;  with  men  like  Comte,  or 
the  late  Mr.  Buckle,  or  Mr.  Mill.  However  much  it 
may  find  to  admire  in  these  personages,  or  in  some  of  them, 

2.">  it  nevertheless  remembers  the  text:  "Be  not  ye  called 
Rabbi!"  and  it  soon  passes  on  from  any  rabbi.  But  Jac- 
obinism loves  a  rabbi ;  it  does  not  want  to  pass  on  from  its 
rabbi  in  pursuit  of  a  future  and  still  unreached  perfection ; 
it  wants  its  rabbi  and  his  ideas  to  stand  for  perfection, 

30  that  they  may  with  the  more  authority  recast  the  world; 
and  for  Jacobinism,  therefore,  culture — eternally  passing 
onward  and  seeking — is  an  impertinence  and  an  offense. 
But  culture,  just  because  it  resists  this  tendency  of  Jacobin- 
ism to  impose  on  us  a  man  with  limitations  and  errors  of 


172  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

his  own  along  with  the  true  ideas  of  which  he  is  the  organ, 
really  does  the  world  and  Jacobinism  itself  a  service. 

So,  too.  Jacobinism,  in  its  fierce  hatred  of  the  past,  and 
of  those  whom  it  makes  liable  for  the  sins  of  the  past, 
cannot   away  with   the   inexhaustible   indulgence  proper  5 
to  culture,  the  consideration  of  circumstances,  the  severe 
judgment  of  actions  joined  to  the  merciful  judgment  of 
persons.     "The   man   of   culture,    is   in   politics,"   cries 
Mr.    Frederic    Harrison,    "one    of    the    poorest    mortals 
alive ! "     Mr.  Frederic  Harrison  wants  to  be  doing  business,   10 
and  he  complains  that  the  man  of  culture  stops  him  with 
a  "turn  for  small  fault-finding,  love  of  selfish  ease,  and 
indecision  in  action."     Of  what  use  is  culture,  he  asks, 
except  for  "a  critic  of  new  books  or  a  professor  of  belles- 
lettres?'*     Why,  it  is  of  use  because,  in  presence  of  the   15 
fierce  exasperation  which  breathes,  or  rather,  I  may  say, 
hisses,  through  the  whole  production  in  which  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  asks  that  question,  it  reminds  us  that  the  per- 
fection of  humaa  nature  is  sweetness  and  light.     It  is  of 
use  because  like  religion, — that  other  effort  after  perfection,   20 
— it  testifies  that  where  bitter  envying  and  strife  are,  there 
is  confusion  and  every  evil  work. 

The  pursuit  of  perfection,  then,  is  the  pursuit  of  sweet- 
ness and  light.  He  who  works  for  sweetness  and  light 
works  to  make  reason  and  the  will  of  (iod  prevail.  He  25 
who  works  for  machinery,  he  who  works  for  hatred,  works 
only  for  confusion.  Culture  looks  beyond  machinery, 
culture  hates  hatred;  culture  has  one  great  passion — the 
passion  for  sweetness  and  light.  It  has  one  even  yet 
greater — the  passion  for  making  them  prevail.  It  is  30 
not  satisfied  till  we  all  come  to  a  perfect  man ;  it  knows  that 
the  sweetness  and  light  of  the  few  must  be  imperfect  until 
the  raw  and  unkindled  masses  of  humanity  are  touched 
with  sweetness   and  light.     If  I  have  not  shrunk  from 


EXPOSITION  173 

saying  that  we  must  work  for  sweetness  and  light,  so 
neither  have  I  shrunk  from  saying  that  we  must  have 
a  broad  basis,  must  have  sweetness  and  Hght  for  as 
many  as  possible.     Again  and  again  I  have  insisted  how 

5  those  are  the  happy  moments  of  humanity,  how  those 
are  the  marking  epochs  of  a  people's  life,  how  those 
are  the  flowering  times  for  literature  and  art  and  all 
the  creative  power  of  genius,  when  there  is  a  national 
glow  of  life  and  thought,  when  the  whole  of  society  is  in 

10  the  fullest  measure  permeated  by  thought,  sensible  to 
beauty,  intelligent  and  alive.  Only  it  must  be  real  thought 
and  real  beauty,  real  sweetness  and  real  light.  Plenty  of 
people  will  try  to  give  the  masses,  as  they  call  them,  an 
intellectual  food  prepared  and  adapted  in  the  way  they 

15  think  proper  for  the  actual  condition  of  the  masses.  The 
ordinary  popular  literature  is  an  example  of  this  way  of 
working  on  the  masses.  Plenty  of  people  will  try  to  indoc- 
trinate the  masses  with  the  set  of  ideas  and  judgments 
constituting  the  creed  of  their  own  profession  or  party. 

20  Our  religious  and  political  organizations  give  an  example 
of  this  way  of  working  on  the  masses.  I  condemn  neither 
way;  but  culture  works  differently.  It  does  not  try  to 
teach  down  to  the  level  of  inferior  classes;  it  does  not  try 
to  win  them  for  this  or  that  sect  of  its  own,  with  ready- 

25  made  judgments  and  watchwords.  It  seeks  to  do  away 
with  classes;  to  make  the  best  that  has  been  thought  and 
known  in  the  world  current  everywhere;  to  make  all  men 
live  in  an  atmosphere  of  sweetness  and  light,  where  they 
may  use  ideas,  as  it  uses  them  itself,  freely — nourished,  and 

30  not  bound,  by  them. 

This  is  the  social  idea;  and  the  men  of  culture  are  the 
true  apostles  of  equality.  The  great  men  of  culture  are 
those  who  have  had  a  passion  for  diffusing,  for  making 
prevail,  for  carrying  from  one  end  of  society  to  the  other, 


174  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

the  best  knowledge,  the  best  ideas  of  their  time;  who  have 
labored  to  divest  knowledge  of  all  that  was  harsh,  uncouth, 
difficult,  abstract,  professional,  exclusive;  to  humanize  it, 
to  make  it  efficient  outside  the  clique  of  the  cultivated  and 
learned,  yet  still  remaining  the  best  knowledge  and  thought  5 
of  the  time,  and  a  true  source,  therefore,  of  sweetness  and 
light.  Such  a  man  was  Abelard,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  in 
spite  of  all  his  imperfections;  and  thence  the  boundless 
emotion  and  enthusiasm  which  Abelard  excited.  Such 
were  Lessing  and  Herder,  in  Germany,  at  the  end  of  the  10 
last  century;  and  their  services  to  Germany  were  in  this 
way  inestimably  precious.  Generations  will  pass,  and 
literary  monuments  will  accumulate,  and  works  far  more 
perfect  than  the  works  of  Lessing  and  Herder  will  be  pro- 
duced in  Germany;  and  yet  the  names  of  these  two  men  15 
will  fill  a  German  with  a  reverence  and  enthusiasm  such 
as  the  names  of  the  most  gifted  masters  will  hardly  awaken. 
And  why.?  Because  they  humanized  knowledge;  because 
they  broadened  the  basis  of  life  and  intelligence;  because 
they  worked  powerfully  to  diffuse  sweetness  and  light,  to  20 
make  reason  and  the  will  of  God  prevail.  With  Saint 
Augustine  they  said:  "Let  us  not  leave  Thee  alone  to 
make,  in  the  secret  of  thy  knowledge,  as  Thou  didst 
before  the  creation  of  the  firmament,  the  division  of  light 
from  darkness ;  let  the  children  of  thy  spirit,  placed  in  their  25 
firmament,  make  their  light  shine  upon  the  earth,  mark  the 
division  of  night  and  day,  and  announce  the  revolution 
of  the  times;  for  the  old  order  is  passed,  and  the  new 
arises;  the  night  is  spent,  the  day  is  come  forth;  and 
Thou  shalt  crown  the  year  with  thy  blessing,  when  Thou  30 
shalt  send  forth  laborers  into  thy  harvest  sown  by  other 
hands  than  theirs;  when  Thou  shalt  send  forth  new  la- 
borers to  new  seed-times,  whereof  the  harvest  shall  be 
not  yet." 


EXPOSITION  175 

Suggestions:  Where  did  Arnold  find  the  title  for  this  essay  ? 
What,  in  your  own  words,  is  the  significance  of  this  title  ?  What 
is  the  connection  between  it,  and  the  title  of  the  volume  from 
which  this  essay  is  taken, — Culture  and  Anarchy? 

Compare  Arnold's  definitions  of  "culture,"  "machinery," 
"curiosity,"  with  "Honor"  and  "Americanism"  as  defined  earlier 
in  this  book.  What  differences  do  we  find  in  these  modes  of  "  ex- 
position by  definition?" 

How  definite  a  plan  has  the  essay?  Make  an  outline  of  it, 
or  a  diagram.  What  is  the  usual  type  of  Arnold's  paragraphs  ? 
Note  carefully  all  devices  for  transition  and  coherence  in  the 
first  six  pages.  What  is  the  function  of  the  ninth  paragraph? 
Find  others  in  the  essay  which  perform  a  similar  office. 

Are  the  sentences  usually  loose  or  usually  periodic?  What 
peculiarities  of  construction  (if  any)  do  you  notice  about  them  ? 
Study,  for  example,  the  last  sentence  in  the  fourth  paragraph. 
How  does  Arnold  give  hiai  sentences  emphasis  ? 

What  is  your  final  impression  of  the  way  in  which  Arnold 
writes?     Compare  it  with  Mill's  style,  and  with  Huxley's  style. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Is  "sweetness  and  light"  an  attribute  of  student  life  at 

College? 

Students  who  have  the  "scientific  passion,"  and  students  who 
have  not. 

The  "machinery"  of  college  life:  (a)  in  the  class-room,  (b) 
outside  of  the  class-room. 

Athletes  who  are  not  "  Philistines. " 

An  essay  to  show  that  "  competency  to  serve,  and  competency 
to  appreciate  and  enjoy"  are  really  only  other  names  for  "sweet- 
ness and  light. " 


WHAT  COLLEGE  STUDENTS  READ 

THE  notion  still  lurks  in  some  quarters  that  there  are 
college  men  who  are  interested  in  other  things  than 
football;  that  somewhere  in  unregarded  corners  may  be 


176  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

hiding  students  who  are  not  adequately  represented  by 
half-page  portraits  of  fierce  fullbacks  and  mountainous 
centers.  Such  a  class  does  exist,  and  wliile  there  is  life 
in  it,  there  is  hope  for  the  future  of  our  colleges.  What  its 
interests  are,  what  it  studies,  what  it  reads,  what  it  thinks,  5 
may  reasonably  claim  consideration,  even  though  it  be  a 
mere  concern  of  education. 

Information  gathered  at  first-hand  among  several 
colleges  would  show  that  the  larger  number  of  students 
who  read  for  their  own  pleasure  devote  most  time  to  10 
newspapers  and  magazines.  College  men  as  a  class  know 
current  news,  at  least  from  the  headlines.  They  do  not 
live  a  life  of  intellectual  seclusion.  In  reading  the  news 
of  the  day,  they  turn  first  of  all  to,  the  athletic  events  and 
study  the  scores  of  all  the  games.  It  would  be  inexcusable  15 
not  to  know  the  record  of  each  athlete.  Of  the  mag- 
azines in  the  reading-room,  those  that  are  devoted  to 
current  topics  are  invariably  the  most  thumbworn. 

The  average  college  man,   even  when  not  a  football 
specialist,  is  not,  as  a  rule,  intellectually  gifted;  his  tastes  20 
are  not  discriminating;  they  are  very  much  like  those  of 
the  rest  of  the  world.     Like  a  true  American,  he  looks  upon 
things  literary  and  artistic  as  a  casual  amusement,  an  easy 
way  of  using  up  time — right  enough  if  one  happens  to  like 
that  sort  of  thing.     The  influence  of  the  athletic  ideal   25 
on  the  reading  of  the  undergraduate  is  plain.     He  knows 
his   Kipling   and   he   loves   his   Jack   London.     *' Those 
fellows  are  men,"  he  remarks.     "They  can   do  things. 
They've  got  the  goods  with  *em. "     The  self-glorification, 
the  brutality,  the  cynicism,  and  the  sensationalism,  of  a  30 
man  like  London,  answer  exactly  the  demands  of  a  new 
race  of  force-worshippers. 

There  is,  of  course,  another  side.     There  is  a  remnant. 
Though  no  student  would  dare  raise  his  voice  against 


EXPOSITION  177 

the  precedence  given  to  athletics,  there  are  men  in  our 
colleges  who  are  not  ashamed  to  admit  that  they  have  a 
genuine  liking  for  good  literature;  there  are  others,  who, 
though  they  do  not  go  so  far  as  to  confess  it,  yet  indulge  it 
5  privately  in  the  quiet  of  their  rooms.  It  would  embarrass 
them  to  be  found  on  the  campus  with  a  copy  of  Pater  in 
their  hands;  but  when  no  one  is  looking  they  may  furtively 
read  a  chapter  of  Marius.  The  tastes  of  this  small  class 
are   an    interesting   subject   for   investigation.     But   one 

10  must  first  draw  the  line  between  the  reading  that  they 
do,  along  with  many  others,  in  connection  with  regular 
college  courses — for  example,  a  popular  course  in  the  his- 
tory of  English  fiction — and  what  they  do  simply  for  their 
own  recreation.     The  fact  that  a  man  elects  courses  in 

15  literature  does  not  indicate,  unfortunately,  a  true  interest 
in  the  subject. 

The  frothier  current  fiction  is  little  read  in  college. 
This  is  no  great  misfortune.  A  novel  even  of  the  selling 
powers  of  The  Masquerader  catches  the  attention  of  few 

20  collegians.  This  is  in  part  due,  no  doubt,  to  the  fact  that 
most  college  libraries  make  no  place  for  such  books  on 
their  shelves.  The  number  of  students  is  naturally  small 
who  care  to  purchase  their  own  novels.  But  there  is  a 
deeper  reason.     Students  who  read  simply  for  a  moment's 

25  diversion  do  not  take  time  for  novels,  while  those  who  read 
with  serious  intention  choose  to  invest  their  leisure  where 
the  returns  will  be  of  less  questionable  value.  The  college 
community  is  relatively  free  from  the  transient  fads  of 
the  outer  world.     The  fact  that  everybody  is  talking  about 

30  The  House  of  Mirth  wins  very  few  readers  for  Mrs.  Whar- 
ton among  undergraduates. 

Our  inquiries  indicate  that  among  the  standard  novelists 
Scott,  Dumas,  Dickens,  and  Stevenson  are  the  best  known. 
Thackeray  and  George  Eliot  find  relatively  few  readers. 


178  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

They  are  considered  rather  slow.  Dickens  is  usually 
much  admired  or  much  disliked;  he  seems  to  excite  more 
violence  of  opinion  than  any  other  popular  novelist.  The 
judgment  of  the  college  reader  is  refreshingly  candid — 
a  candor,  to  be  sure,  that  is  often  the  result  of  ignorance.  5 
He  does  not  care  a  rap  for  tradition,  he  decries  authority. 
He  likes  to  be  an  iconoclast.  One  student  thus  expressed 
himself.  "Frankly,  now,"  he  said,  "don't  you  think  that 
if  the  critics  didn't  all  run  her  down  so,  you'd  call  Marie 
Corelli  as  great  a  novelist  as  any  of  the  century?  The  10 
trouble  is  just  this:  the  critics  have  got  to  be  down  on 
somebody,  and  they've  chosen  her  just  because  she  dares 
to  be  original  and  different. " 

With  rare  exceptions,  the  modern  collegian  does  not  read 
poetry  unless  he  has  to.     He  may  study  it  in  his  regular   15 
college  course;  but  that  is  a  different  matter.     Except 
for  a  few  admirers  of,  say,  Byron,  Rossetti,  and  Stephen 
Phillips,  the  spontaneous  reading  of  poetry  has  gone  to  the 
w:all   in   our   colleges.     Even   the  Barrack-Room  Ballads 
and  the  Seven  Seas  seem  to  have  had  their  day.     An  20 
interesting  complement   to   this   statement   is   the   direct 
testimony  from  four  colleges  that  a  rather  widespread 
interest  is  showing  itself  in  the  modern  drama.     Ibsen 
land  Pinero  and  Jones  and  Maeterlinck  are  being  read 
and  discussed  by  a  surprisingly  large  number  of  college  25 
men — men,  too,  who  do  very  little  serious  reading  along 
other  lines. 

Nevertheless,  the  man  of  aggressive  literary  enthusiasm 
finds  a  depressing  indifference  in  the  college  community. 
It  is  stony  ground.  We  speak,  of  course,  only  of  rough  30 
averages.  Conditions  vary,  and  there  are  institutions 
where  the  work  of  a  single  professor  may  alter  everything. 
But,  in  general,  the  average  student  of  literary  leanings 
is  aware  that  few  sympathize  with  his  taste.     He  comes 


EXPOSITION  179 

to  the  discovery  that  the  most  convenient  way  of  living 
with  his  fellows  is  to  keep  his  reading  to  himself.  One 
little  group  of  four  men  in  a  certain  college  used  to  meet 
every  fortnight  to  read  together  a  play  of  Sophocles  or 
5  poems  of  Swinburne  or  an  essay  by  Pater.  But  they 
never  told  their  love.  It  would  have  been  much  easier 
to  admit  that  one  had  been  off  on  a  drunk,  than  that  one 
had  been  reading  Sophocles  for  pleasure. 

A  turn  of  affairs  for  the  better  can  hardly  be  looked  for 

10  so  long  as  the  athletic  ideal  is  tyrant.  But  the  athletic 
ideal  itself  is  the  logical  issue  of  American  commercialism. 
People  who  value  success  above  character  must  submit 
with  what  grace  they  can  when  their  sons  rank  a  football 
victory  above  any  college  honor.     That  the  word  culture 

15  should  sound  remote  and  ridiculously  priggish  to  a  dev- 
otee of  the  new  idolatry,  is  inevitable.  Such  a  thing  as 
intellectual  discipline  is  a  mere  hobby  of  weak-eyed,  un- 
practical professors.  Reading  stories  and  essays  and 
poems  is  the  business  of  a  five-o'clock-tea  specialist. — New 

20  York  Evening  Post,  December  9,  1905. 


THE  FLUMMERY  OF  COLLEGE  CAPS 
^  AND  GOWNS 

BY  way  of  such  explanation  as  may  avert  confusion 
of  mind,  the   Springfield  Republican  has  thought 
it  well,  in  its  issue  of  October  20,  to  devote  half  a  column 
30  of  space  to  an  explanation  of  the  meaning  of  academic 
costumes,  in  the  matter  of  stuffs,  colors,  forms,  facings, 
linings,  and  the  like. 

In  our  very  practical  age  one  wonders  as  to  the   why 
and   wherefore  of  these  things;  and,  very  reverently  and 


180  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

respectfully,  I  venture  to  ask  Columbia  University,  whose 
statutes  are  cited  as  authoritative  in  such  matters,  why  it 
should  pass  any  such  statutes,  and  why  it  should  not  recog- 
nize popular  education  and  the  universal  ability  to  read, 
instead  of  cherishing  those  means  of  communication  5 
which  were  necessary  in  medieval  times  when  kings  who 
knew  not  how  to  write  dipped  their  hands  into  ink  and 
impressed  them  upon  documents  as  a  verification  of  their 
validity. 

We   all   know   how   the   cotton- velvet-clad   stage  king  10 
certifies  his  will  by  giving  his  signet  ring  to  the  hero  as  an 
attestation.     We  wonder  what  he  does  for  another  signet 
ring  in  the  meanwhile.     But  in  our  time  men  know  how 
to  read  and  write.     If  King  Edward  of  England  or  John 
D.  Rockefeller  or  J.  P.  Morgan  or  any  other  ruler  of  men   15 
wishes  to  make  his  will  known,  he  takes  up  a  pad  and 
writes  on  it  what  he  wishes  to  say  and  signs  his  name 
at  the  bottom,  and  that  half  sheet  of  paper  is  potent  to 
transfer  multitudinous  millions  or  to   change  the  policy 
of  great  corporations  or  to  do  anything  else  that  the  writer  20 
directs. 

Why  should  our  colleges  and  universities — which  are 
founded  upon  the  idea  of  the  ability  of  men  to  read  and 
write — cherish  and  preserve  the  traditions  of  a  more  ignor- 
ant age  and  dignify  them  with  the  recognition  of  university  25 
statutes  ?  Why  should  not  these  great  agencies  of  modern 
education  be  the  foremost  leaders  in  the  use  of  modern 
means  for  the  communication  of  ideas  .^ 

Thus  we  are  told  that  on  a  college  platform  a  hood  faced 
with  scarlet  means  that  its  wearer  has  a  degree  in  divinity  30 
that  one  faced  with  purple  means  a  degree  in  law;  one  in 
green  a.  degree  in  medicine,  and  so  on  to  the  end  of  the 
curious  chapter.  But  why  all  this  flummery  in  an  age 
when  all  men  know  how  to  read?     Why  should  not  the 


EXPOSITION  181 

several  bachelors  and  doctors  of  divinity,  law,  medicine, 
and  the  rest  simply  inscribe  their  respective  degrees  on 
the  dressing-gowns  or  bath  robes  that  they  wear  at  com- 
mencements and  upon  other  occasions  of  scholastic  state  ? 

5  Then  everybody  would  understand.  Or,  better  still, 
why  should  not  our  universities  put  aside  this  medieval 
flummery  altogether  and  stand  bravely  upon  their  merits 
as  institutions  that  educate  modern  men  for  modern  life? 
The  cap  and  gown  are  simply  relics  of  a  time  when  educa- 

10  tion  was  monastic  and  its  recipients  were  clerics.  In 
our  time  they  are  lies.  Why  not  be  honest  and  abolish 
them?  The  newspapers  every  year  record  the  names  of 
those  who  receive  degrees  at  the  hands  of  our  great  uni- 
versities— whether  real  degrees,  conferred  as  the  recogni- 

15  tion  and  reward  of  actual  study,  or  honorary  degrees,  con- 
ferred for  less  worthy  reasons.  The  cyclopedias  and 
dictionaries  of  biography  never  omit  to  give  one  who 
achieves  anything  worth  while  credit  for  all  his  degrees, 
as  well  as  for  all  his  actual  achievements  in  scholarship. 

20  Why  not  leave  the  matter  at  that  ?  What  is  the  use  of  all 
this  millinery  of  caps  and  gowns,  with  their  silk  or  their 
fustian,  their  purples  and  yellows,  their  dark  and  light 
blues,  their  scarlets,  and  all  the  rest  of  it  ? 

Are  not  these  flummeries   distinctly  unworthy  of  the 

25  universities  of  an  age  and  country  that  looks  more  to  the 
future  than  to  the  past  and  regards  condition  as  a  thing  of 
greater  worth  than  tradition  ? 

Is  it  not  the  duty  of  our  educational  institutions  to  teach 
young  men  to  *'look  forward,  not  backward,  out  and  not 

30  in,  up  and  not  down?"  — George  Gary  Eggleston, 
in  New  York  Times  {Saturday  Review),  Nov.  2,  1901. 

Suggestions  :  In  planning  an  editorial,  a  definite  order  of 
arrangement  should  be  followed  as  nearly  as  possible,  i.  e.,  (1) 
statement  of  the  situation,  (2)  opinion  upon  the  situation.     Ob- 


182  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

serve  that  each  of  the  foregoing  editorials  follows  this  plan  quite 
clearly. 

Try  to  illustrate,  as  concretely  as  possible,  the  points  that 
you  are  explaining.  Nothing  is  so  convincing  as  a  definite  case, 
or   example. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS* 

Classes  should  begin  later  (or  earlier)  in  the  morning  at 

College. 

Is    the   spirit   of   democracy   disappearing   at College? 

Should   Freshmen   be   obliged   to   wear   class   hats? 

The  evils  (benefits)  of  a  class  "rush." 

Why  more  men  are  not  out  for  the  crew,  (basket-ball,  track, 
etc.) 

The  desirability  (or  futility)  of  "  simplified  spelling. " 

"Yellow"  journalism  and  "yellow"  drama. 

The  influence  of  the  Sunday  comic  supplement. 

Should  chapel  exercises  be  abolished  ?  (resumed  ?) 


THE    STUDY    OF   POETRYf 

Matthew  Arnold 

THE  future  of  poetry  is  immense,  because  in  poetry, 
where  it  is  worthy  of  its  high  destinies,  our  race, 
as  time  goes  on,  will  find  an  ever  surer  and  surer  stay. 
There  is  not  a  creed  which  is  not  shaken,  not  an  accredited 
dogma  which  is  not  shown  to  be  questionable,  not  a  re-  5 
ceived  tradition  which  does  not  tlu'eaten  to  dissolve. 
Our  religion  has  materialized  itself  in  the  fact,  in  the  sup- 
posed fact;  it  has  attached  its  emotion  to  the  fact,  and  now 
the  fact  is  failing  it.  But  for  poetry  the  idea  is  everything; 
the  rest  is  a  world  of  illusion,  of  divine  illusion.     Poetry   10 

*These  may  be  infinitely  varied,  according  to  local  conditions. 

fPubiished  in  1880  as  the  General  Introduction  to  The  English  Poets* 
edited  by  T.  H.  Ward. 


EXPOSITION  183 

attaches  its  emotion  to  the  idea;  the  idea  is  the  fact.  The 
strongest  part  of  our  rehgion  to-day  is  its  unconscious 
poetry. " 

Let  me  be  permitted  to  quote  these  words  of  my  own,  as 
5  uttering  the  thought  which  should,  in  my  opinion,  go  with 
us  and  govern  us  in  all  our  study  of  poetry.  In  the  present 
work  it  is  the  course  of  one  great  contributory  stream 
to  the  world-river  of  poetry  that  we  are  invited  to  follow. 
We  are  here  invited  to  trace  the  stream  of  English  poetry. 

•10  But  whether  we  set  ourselves,  as  here,  to  follow  only  one 
of  the  several  streams  that  make  the  mighty  river  of  poetry, 
or  whether  we  seek  to  know  them  all,  our  governing  thought 
should  be  the  same.  We  should  conceive  of  poetry  worth- 
ily, and  more  highly  than  it  has  been  the  custom  to  con- 

15  ceive  of  it.  We  should  conceive  of  it  as  capable  of  higher 
uses,  and  called  to  higher  destinies,  than  those  which  in 
general  men  have  assigned  to  it  hitherto.  More  and  more 
mankind  will  discover  that  we.  have  to  turn  to  poetry  to 
interpret  life  for  us,  to  console  us,  to  sustain  us.     Without 

20  poetry,  our  science  will  appear  incomplete;  and  most  of 
what  now  passes  with  us  for  religion  and  philosophy  will 
be  replaced  by  poetry.  Science,  I  say,  will  appear  incom- 
plete without  it.  For  finely  and  truly  does  Wordsworth 
call  poetry  "the  impassioned  expression  which  is  in  the 

25  countenance  of  all  science;"  and  what  is  a  countenance 
without  its  expression  ?  Again,  Wordsworth  finely  and 
truly  calls  poetry  "the  breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  know- 
ledge:" our  religion,  parading  evidences  such  as  those  on 
which  the  popular  mind  relies  now;  our  philosophy,  plum- 

30  ing  itself  on  its  reasonings  about  causation  and  finite 
and  infinite  being;  what  are  they  but  the  shadows  and 
dreams  and  false  shows  of  knowledge  .^  The  day  will 
come  when  we  shall  wonder  at  ourselves  for  having  trusted 
to  them,  for  having  taken  them  seriously;  and  the  more 


184  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

we  perceive  their  hollowness,  the  more  we  shall  prize  "the 
breath  and  finer  spirit  of  knowledge"  offered  to  us.  by 
poetry. 

But  if  we  conceive  thus  highly  of  the  destinies  of  poetry, 
we  must  also  set  our  standard  for  poetry  high,  since  poetry,  5 
to  be  capable  of  fulfilling  such  high  destinies,  must  be 
poetry  of  a  high  order  of  excellence.  We  must  accustom 
ourselves  to  a  high  standard  and  to  a  strict  judgment. 
Sainte-Beuve  relates  that  Napoleon  one  day  said,  when 
somebody  was  spoken  of  in  his  presence  as  a  charlatan:  1€ 
"Charlatan  as  much  as  you  please;  but  where  is  there 
not  charlatanism?"  "Yes,"  answers  Sainte-Beuve,  "in 
politics,  in  the  art  of  governing  mankind,  that  is  perhaps 
true.  But  in  the  order  of  thought,  in  art,  the  glory,  the 
eternal  honor  is  that  charlatanism  shall  find  no  entrance;  15 
herein  lies  the  inviolableness  of  that  noble  portion  of 
man's  being."  It  is  admirably  said,  and  let  us  hold  fast 
to  it.  In  poetry,  which  is  thought  and  art  in  one,  it  is  the 
glory,  the  eternal  honor,  that  charlatanism  shall  find 
no  entrance;  that  this  noble  sphere  be  kept  inviolate  and  20 
inviolable.  Charlatanism  is  for  confusing  or  obliterating 
the  distinctions  between  excellent  and  inferior,  sound  and 
unsound  or  only  half-sound,  true  and  untrue  or  only  half- 
t:  ue.  It  is  charlatanism,  conscious  or  unconscious,  when- 
ever we  confuse  or  obliterate  these.  And  in  poetry,  more  25 
than  anywhere  else,  it  is  unpermissible  to  confuse  or 
obliterate  them.  For  in  poetry  the  distinction  between 
excellent  and  inferior,  sound  and  unsound  or  only  half- 
sound,  true  and  untrue  or  only  half-true,  is  of  paramount 
importance.  It  is  of  paramount  importance  because  of  30 
the  high  destinies  of  poetry.  In  poetry,  as  a  criticism  of 
life  under  the  conditions  fixed  for  such  a  criticism  by  the 
laws  of  poetic  truth  and  poetic  beauty,  the  spirit  of  our 
race  will  find,  we  have  said,  as  time  goes  on  and  as  other 


EXPOSITION  185 

helps  fail,  its  consolation  and  stay.  But  the  consolation 
and  stay  will  be  of  power  in  proportion  to  the  power  of 
the  criticism  of  life.  And  the  criticism  of  life  will  be  of 
power  in  proportion  as  the  poetry  conveying  it  is  excellent 

5  rather  than  inferior,  sound  rather  than  unsound  or  half- 
sound,  true  rather  than  untrue  or  half-true. 

The  best  poetry  is  what  we  want;  the  best  poetry  will  be 
found  to  have  a  power  of  forming,  sustaining,  and  delight- 
ing us,  as  nothing  else  can.     A  clearer,  deeper  sense  of 

10  the  best  in  poetry,  and  of  the  strength  and  joy  to  be  drawn 
from  it,  is  the  most  precious  benefit  which  we  can  gather 
from  a  poetical  collection  such  as  the  present.  And 
yet  in  the  very  nature  and  conduct  of  such  a  collection 
there  is  inevitably  something  which  tends  to  obscure  in  us 

15  the  consciousness  of  what  our  benefit  should  be,  and  to 
distract  us  from  the  pursuit  of  it.     We  should  therefore 
steadily  set  it  before  our  minds  at  the  outset,  and  should 
compel  ourselves  to  revert  constantly  to  the  thought  of  it- 
as  we  proceed. 

20  Yes;  constantly,  in  reading  poetry,  a  sense_for  the  best, 
the  really  excellent,  and  of  the  strength  and  joy  to  be  drawn 
from  it,  should  be  present  in  our  minds  and  should  govern 
our  estimate  of  what  we  read.  But  this  real  estimate,  the 
only  true  one,  is  liable  to  be  superseded,  if  we  are  not 

25  watchful,  by  two  other  kinds  of  estimate,  the  historic 
estimate  and  the  personal  estimate,  both  of  which  are 
fallacious.  A  poet  or  a  poem  may  count  to  us  historically, 
they  may  count  to  us  in  grounds  personal  to  ourselves, 
and  they  may  count  to  us  really.     They  may  count  to  us 

30  historically.  The  course  of  development  of  a  nation's 
language,  thought,  and  poetry,  is  profoundly  interesting; 
and  by  regarding  a  poet's  work  as  a  stage  in  this  course 
of  development  we  may  easily  bring  ourselves  to  make 
it  of  more  importance  as  poetry  than  in  itself  it  really  is, 


186  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

we  may  come  to  use  a  language  of  quite  exaggerated 
praise  in  criticizing  it;  in  short,  to  overrate  it.  So  arises 
in  our  poetic  judgments  the  fallacy  caused  by  the  estimate 
which  we  may  call  historic.  Then,  again,  a  poet  or  a 
poem  may  count  to  us  on  grounds  personal  to  ourselves.  5 
Our  personal  affinities,  likings,  and  circumstances,  have 
great  power  to  sway  our  estimate  of  this  or  that  poet's 
work,  and  to  make  us  attach  more  importance  to  it  as 
poetry  than  in  itself  it  really  possesses,  because  to  us  it  is, 
or  has  been,  of  high  importance.  Here  also  we  overrate  10 
the  object  of  our  interest,  and  apply  to  it  a  language  of 
praise  which  is  quite  exaggerated.  And  thus  we  get  the 
source  of  a  second  fallacy  in  our  poetic  judgments, — the 
fallacy  caused  by  an  estimate  which  we  may  call  personal. 

Both  fallacies  are  natural.     It  is  evident  how  naturally  15 
the  study  of  the  history  and  development  of  a  poetry  may 
incline  a  man  to  pause  over  reputations  and  works  once 
conspicuous  but  now  obscure,  and  to  quarrel  with  a  careless 
public  for  skipping,  in  obedience  to  mere  tradition  and 
habit,  from  one  famous  name  or  work  in  its  national  20 
poetry  to  another,  ignorant  of  what  it  misses,  and  of  the 
reason  for  keeping  what  it  keeps,  and  of  the  whole  process 
of  growth  in  its  poetry.     The  French  have  become  diligent 
students  of  their  own  early  poetry,  which  they  long  neg- 
lected; the  study  makes  many  of  them  dissatisfied  with  this  25 
so-called  classical  poetry,  the  court-tragedy  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  a  poetry  which  Pellisson  long  ago  reproach- 
ed with  its  want  of  the  true  poetic  stamp,  with  its  politesse 
sterile  et  rampante,  but  which  nevertheless  has  reigned  in 
France  as  absolutely  as  if  it  had  been  the  perfection  of  30 
classical  poetry  indeed.     The  dissatisfaction   is  natural; 
yet  a  lively  and  accomplished  critic,  M.  Charles  d'HericauIt 
the  editor  of  Clement  Marot,  goes  too  far  when  he  says  that 
"the  cloud  of  glory  playing  round  a  classic  is  a  mist  as 


EXPOSITION  187 

dangerous  to  the  future  of  a  literature  as  it  is  intolerable 
for  the  purposes  of  history."  "It  hinders,"  he  goes  on, 
"it  hinders  us  from  seeing  more  than  one  single  point, 
the  culminating  and  exceptional  point;  the  summary, 
5  fictitious  and  arbitrary,  of  a  thought  and  of  a  work.  It 
substitutes  a  halo  for  a  physiognomy,  it  puts  a  statue  where 
there  was  once  a  man,  and  hiding  from  us  all  trace  of  the 
labor,  the  attempts,  the  weaknesses,  the  failures,  it  claims 
not  study  but  veneration;  it  does  not  show  us  how  the 

10  thing  is  done,  it  imposes  upon  us  a  model.  Above  all,  for 
the  historian  this  creation  of  classic  personages  is  inad- 
missible; for  it  withdraws  the  poet  from  his  time,  from 
his  proper  life,  it  breaks  historical  relationships,  it  blinds 
criticism  by  conventional  admiration,  and  renders  the  in- 

15  vestigation  of  literary  origins  unacceptable.  It  gives  us  a 
human  personage  no  longer,  but  a  God  seated  immovable 
amidst  his  perfect  work,  like  Jupiter  on  Olympus;  and 
hardly  will  it  be  possible  for  the  young  student,  to  whom 
such  work  is  exhibited  at  such  a  distance  from  him,  to 

20  believe  that  it  did  not  issue  ready  made  from  that  divine 
head." 

All  this  is  brilliantly  and  tellingly  said,  but  we  must 
plead  for  a  distinction.  Everything  depends  on  thejreajity 
of  a  poet's  classic  character.     If  he  is  a  dubious  classic, 

25  let  us  sift  him;  if  he  is  a  false  classic,  let  us  explode  him. 
But  if  he  is  a  real  classic,  if  his  work  belongs  to  the  class 
of  the  very  best  (for  this  is  the  true  and  right  meaning 
of  the  word  classic,  classical),  then  the  great  thing  for  us 
is  to  feel  and  enjoy  his  work  as  deeply  as  ever  we  can, 

30  and  to  appreciate  the  wide  difference  between  it  and  all 
work  which  has  not  the  same  high  character.  This  is 
what  is  salutary,  this  is  what  is  formative;  this  is  the  great 
benefit  to  be  got  from  the  study  of  poetry.  Everything 
which  interferes  with  it,  which   hinders  it,  is  injurious. 


188  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

True,  we  must  read  our  classic  with  open  eyes,  and  not 
with  eyes  blinded  with  superstition ;  we  must  perceive  when 
his  work  comes  short,  when  it  drops  out  of  the  class  of  the 
very  best,  and  we  must  rate  it,  in  such  cases,  at  its  proper 
value.     But  the  use  of  this  negative  criticism  is  not  in  it-  5 
self,  it  is  entirely  in  its  enabling  us  to  have  a  clearer  sense 
and  a  deeper  enjoyment  of  what  is  truly  excellent.     To 
trace  the  labor,  the  attempts,  the  weaknesses,  the  failures 
of  a  genuine  classic,  to  acquaint  oneself  with  his  time 
and  his  life  and  his  historical  relationships,  is  mere  literary   10 
dilettantism  unless   it  has  that  clear  sense  and   deeper 
enjoyment  for  its  end.     It  may  be  said  that  the  more  we 
know  about  a  classic  the  better  we  shall  enjoy  him;  and, 
if  we  lived  as  long  as  Methuselah  and  had  all  of  us  heads 
of  perfect   clearness   and   wills   of  perfect  steadfastness,   15 
this  might  be  true  in  fact  as  it  is  plausible  in  theory.     But 
the  case  here  is  much  the  same  as  the  case  with  the  Greek 
and    Latin    studies    of   our    schoolboys.     The    elaborate 
philological  groundwork  which  we  require  them  to  lay  is 
in  theory  an  admirable  preparation  for  appreciating   the  20 
Greek  and  Latin  authors  worthily.     The  more  thoroughly 
we  lay  the  groundwork,  the  better  we  shall  be  able,  it 
may  be  said,  to  enjoy  the  authors.     True,  if  time  were 
not  so  short,  and  schoolboys'  wits  not  so  soon  tired  and 
their  power  of  attention  exhausted;  only,   as  it  is,   the   25 
elaborate  philological  preparation  goes  on,  but  the  authors 
are  little  known  and  less  enjoyed.    So  with  the  investigator 
of  "historic  origins"  in  poetry.     He  ought  to  enjoy  the 
true  classic  all  the  better  for  his  investigations;  he  often 
is  distracted  from  the  enjoyment  of  the  best,  and  with  the  30 
less  good  he  overbusies  himself,  and  is  prone  to  overrate 
it  in  proportion  to  the  trouble  which  it  has  cost  him. 

The  idea  of  tracing  historic  origins  and  historical  rela- 
tionships cannot  be  absent  from  a  compilation  like  the 


EXPOSITION  189 

present.  And  naturally  the  poets  to  be  exhibited  in  it 
will  be  assigned  to  those  persons  for  exhibition  who  are 
known  to  prize  them  highly,  rather  than  to  those  who  have 
no  special  inclination  toward  them.  Moreover  the  very 
5  occupation  with  an  author,  and  the  business  of  exhibiting 
him,  disposes  us  to  affirm  and  amplify  his  importance. 
In  the  present  work,  therefore,  we  are  sure  of  frequent 
temptation  to  adopt  the  historic  estimate,  or  the  personal 
estimate,  and  to  forget  the  real  estimate;  which  latter, 

10  nevertheless,  we  must  employ  if  we  are  to  make  poetry 
yield  us  its  full  benefit.  So  high  is  that  benefit,  the  benefit 
of  clearly  feeling  and  of  deeply  enjoying  the  really  excel- 
lent, the  truly  classic  in  poetry,  that  we  do  well,  I  say,  to  set 
it  fixedly  before  our  minds  as  our  object  in  studying  poets 

15  and  poetry,  and  to  make  the  desire  of  attaining  it  the  one 
principle  to  which,  as  the  Imitation  says,  whatever  we 
may  read  or  come  to  know,  we  always  return.  Cum 
multa  legeris  et  cognoveris,  ad  unum  semper  oportet  redire 
principium. 

20       The  historic  estimate  is  likely  in  especial  to  affect  our 
judgment  and  our  language  when  we  are  dealing  with 
ancient  poets;  the  personal  estimate  when  we  are  dealing 
with  poets  our  contemporaries,  or  at  any  rate  modern.    ] 
The  exaggerations  due  to  the  historic  estimate  are  not  in 

25  themselves,  perhaps,  of  very  much  gravity.  Their  report 
hardly  enters  the  general  ear;  probably  they  do  not  al- 
ways impose  even  on  the  literary  men  who  adopt  them. 
But  they  lead  to  a  dangerous  abuse  of  language.  So  we 
hear   Csedmon,   amongst  our  own    poets,   compared    to 

30  Milton.  I  have  already  noticed  the  enthusiasm  of  one 
accomplished  French  critic  for  "historic  origins. "  Another 
eminent  French  critic,  M.  Vitet,  comments  upon  that 
famous  document  of  the  early  poetry  of  his  nation,  the 
Chanson  de  Roland.     It  is  indeed  a  most  interesting  docu- 


190  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

ment.  The  joculator  or  jongleur  Taillefer,  who  was  with 
William  the  Conqueror's  army  at  Hastings,  marched  be- 
fore the  Norman  troops,  so  said  the  tradition,  singing  "of 
Charlemagne  and  of  Roland  and  of  Oliver,  and  of  the 
vassals  who  died  at  Roncevaux;"  and  it  is  suggested  that  5 
in  the  Chanson  de  Roland  by  one  Turoldus  or  Theroulde, 
a  poem  preserved  in  a  manuscript  of  the  twelfth  century 
in  the  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford,  we  have  certainly 
the  matter,  perhaps  even  some  of  the  words,  of  the  chaunt 
which  Taillefer  sang.  The  poem  has  vigor  and  freshness;  10 
it  is  not  without  pathos.  But  M.  Vitet  is  not  satisfied 
with  seeing  in  it  a  document  of  some  poetic  value,  and  of 
very  high  historic  and  linguistic  value;  he  sees  in  it  a 
grand  and  beautiful  work,  a  monument  of  epic  genius. 
In  its  general  design  he  finds  the  grandiose  conception,  15 
in  its  details  he  finds  the  constant  union  of  simplicity  with 
greatness,  which  are  the  marks,  he  truly  says,  of  the 
genuine  epic,  and  distinguish  it  from  the  artificial  epic 
of  literary  ages.  One  thinks  of  Homer;  this  is  the  sort  of 
praise  which  is  given  to  Homer,  and  justly  given.  Higher  20 
praise  there  cannot  well  be,  and  it  is  the  praise  due  to 
epic  poetry  of  the  highest  ->rder  only,  and  to  no  other. 
Let  us  try,  then,  the  Chanson  de  Roland  at  its  best.  Roland 
mortally  wounded,  lays  himself  down  under  a  pine  tree, 
with  his  face  turned  toward  Spain  and  the  enemy:  25 

"De  plusurs  choses  k  remerabrer  li  prist 
De  tantes  teres  cume  li  l>ers  cunquist, 
De  dulce  France,  des  humes  de  sun  lign, 
De  Carlemagne  sun  seignor  ki  Tnurrit."* 

That  is  primitive  work,  I  repeat,  with  an  undeniable  poetic 

quality  of  its  own.     It  deserves  such  praise  and  such  praise  80 

is  sufficient  for  it.     But  now  turn  to  Homer: 

♦"Then  began  he  to  call  many  things  to  remembrance, — all  the  lands 
which  his  valor  conquered,  and  pleasant  Franc^e,  and  the  men  of  his 
lineage,  and  Charlemagne  his  liege  lord  who  nourished  him." — Chan" 
son  de  Rokmdy   iii.   939-942. 


EXPOSITION  191 

^^fis  (pnrot  Tovs  5'  ^5^  Karix^^  <pvai^oos  ata 
kv  AaKidaifxopi  av9i,  <pi\r)  iv  irarpidi  yai]j  , 

We  are  here  in  another  world,  another  order  of  poetry 
altogether;  here  is  rightly  due  such  supreme  praise  as  that 
5  which  M.  Vitet  gives  to  the  Chanson  de  Roland.  If  our 
words  are  to  have  any  meaning,  if  our  judgments  are  to 
have  any  solidity,  we  must  not  heap  that  supreme  praise 
upon  poetry  of  an  order  immeasurably  inferior. 

Indeed  there  can  be  no  more  useful  help  for  discovering 

10  what  poetry  belongs  to  the  class  of  the  truly  excellent,  and 
can  therefore  do  us  most  good,  than  to  have  always  in 
one's  mind  lines  and  expressions  of  the  great  masters,  and 
to  apply  them  as  a  touchstone  to  other  poetry.  Of  course 
we  are  not  to  require  this  other  poetry  to  resemble  them: 

15  it  may  be  very  dissimilar.  But  if  we  have  any  tact  we 
shall  find  them,  when  we  have  lodged  them  well  in  our 
minds,  an  infallible  touchstone  for  detecting  the  presence 
or  absence  of  high  poetic  quality,  and  also  the  degree  of 
this  quality,  in  all  other  poetry  which  we  may  place  beside 

20  them.  Short  passages,  even  single  lines,  will  serve  our 
turn  quite  sufficiently.  Take  the  two  lines  which  I  have 
just  quoted  from  Homer,  the  poet's  comment  on  Helen's 
mention  of  her  brothers;  or  take  his 


25 


^A  5€t\w    Tt  (r<pa>i  Supieu  TItjX^i  duaKTt 
OvrjT^l    vfxus  5'  hoTov  dyrjpco  r    aOavarco  r§, 
^  tj'tt  Svar-qvoiai  fifr*  dvbpdciv  d\y('  lx^''o»'.'t 

the  address  of  Zeus  to  the  horses  of  Peleus;  or,  take  finally, 

his 

*"So  said  she;  they  long  since  in  Earth's  soft  arms  were  reposing, 
There,  in  their  own  dear  land,  their  father  land,  Lacedaemon." 

Iliad,  iii.  243-4  (translated  by  Dr.  Hawtrey) 
+"Ah,  unhappy  pair,  why  gave  we  you  to  King  Peleus,  to  a  mortal? 
but  ye  are  without  old  age,  and  immortal.     Was  it  that  with  men  born 
to  misery  ye  might  have  sorrow.?" — Iliad,  xvii.  443-5. 


192  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 


Kal  ai,  yipoVt  rb  nplu  fi^y  aKovontv  oK^iov  ttvai  4; 

the  words  of  Achilles  to  Priam,  a  suppliant  before  him. 
Take  that  incomparable  line  and  a  half  of  Dante,  Ugolino's 
tremendous  words: 

"lo  no  piangeva;  si  dentro  impietrai. 
Piangevan  elli  .  .  ."f 

take  the  lovely  words  of  Beatrice  to  Virgil: 

"lo  son  fatta  da  Dio,  sua  merce,  tale, 
Che  la  vostra  miseria  non  mi  tange, 
Ne  fiamma  d'esto  incendio  non  m'assale  .  .  ."J 

take  the  simple,  but  perfect,  single  line : 

"In  la  sua  volontade  e  nostra  pace."** 

Take  of  Shakespeare  a  line  or  two  of  Henry  the  Fourth's 
expostulation  with  sleep: 

"Wilt  thou  upon  the  high  and  giddy  mast 
Seal  up  the  ship-boy's  eyes,  and  rock  his  brains 
In  cradle  of  the  rude  imperious  surge  ..." 

and  take,  as  well,  Hamlet's  dying  request  to  Horatio: 

"If  thou  didst  ever  hold  me  in  thy  heart. 
Absent  thee  from  feUcity  awhile, 
And  in  this  harsh  world  draw  thy  breath  in  pain 
To  tell  my  story.  .  ." 

Take  of  Milton  that  Miltonic  passage: 

"Darken'd   so,   yet  shone 
Above  them  all  the  archangel;  but  his  face 
Deep  scars  of  thunder  had  intrenched,  and  care 
Sat  on  his  faded  cheek  ..." 

*"Nay,  and  thou  too,  old  man,  in  former  days  wast,  as  we  hear,  happy.' 
— Iliad,  xxiv.  5-i3. 

t"I  wailed  not,  so  of  stone  grew  I  within; — <Acy  wailed." — Inferno, 
xxxiii.  39,  40. 

J  "Of  such  sort  hath  God,  thanked  be  his  mercy,  made  me,  that  your 
misery  toucheth  me  not,  neither  doth  the  flame  of  this  fire  strike  me. " — 
Inferno,  ii.  91-3. 

**"In  His  will  is  our  peace." — Paradiso,  iii.  85. 


EXPOSITION  198 

add  two  such  lines  as: 

"And  courage  never  to  submit  or  jdeld 
And  what  is  else  not  to  be  overcome  ..." 

and  finish  with  the  exquisite  close  to  the  loss  of  Proserpine, 
5  the  loss 

"which  cost  Ceres  all  that  pain 

To  seek  her  through  the  world." 

These  few  lines,  if  we  have  tact  and  can  use  them,  are 

enough  even  of  themselves  to  keep  clear  and  sound  our 

10  judgments  about  poetry,  to  save  us  from  fallacious  estimates 
of  it,  to  conduct  us  to  a  real  estimate. 

The  specimens  I  have  quoted  differ  widely  from  one 
another,  but  they  have  in  common  this :  the  possession  of 
the  very  highest  poetical  quality.      If  we  are  thoroughly 

15  penetrated  by  their  power,  we  shall  find  that  we  have  ac- 
quired a  sense  enabling  us,  whatever  poetry  may  be  laid 
before  us,  to  feel  the  degree  in  which  a  high  poetical 
quality  is  present  or  wanting  there.  Critics  give  them- 
selves great  labor  to  draw  out  what  in  the  abstract  consti- 

20  tutes  the  characters  of  a  high  quality  of  poetry.  It  is  much 
better  simply  to  have  recourse  to  concrete  examples: — 
to  take  specimens  of  poetry  of  the  high,  the  very  highest 
quality,  and  to  say:  The  characters  of  a  high  quality  of 
poetry  are  what  is  expressed  there.     They  are  far  better 

25  recognized  by  being  felt  in  the  verse  of  the  master,  than  by 
being  perused  in  the  prose  of  the  critic.  Nevertheless 
if  we  are  urgently  pressed  to  give  some  critical  account 
of  them,  we  may  safely,  perhaps,  venture  on  laying  down, 
not  indeed  how  and  why  the  characters  arise,  but  where 

30  and  in  what  they  arise.  They  are  in  the  matter  and 
substance  of  the  poetry,  and  they  are  in  its  manner  and 
style.  Both  of  these,  the  substance  and  matter  on  the 
one  hand,  the  style  and  manner  on  the  other,  have  a  mark, 
an  accent,  of  high  beauty,  worth,  and  power.     But  if  we 


194  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

are  asked  to  define  this  mark  and  accent  in  the  abstract, 
our  answer  must  be:  No,  for  we  should  thereby  be  darken- 
ing the  question,  not  clearing  it.  The  mark  and  accent 
are  as  given  by  the  substance  and  matter  of  that  poetry, 
by  the  style  and  manner  of  that  poetry,  and  of  all  other  5 
poetry  which  is  akin  to  it  in  quality. 

Only  one  thing  we  may  add  as  to  the  substance  and 
matter  of  poetry,  guiding  ourselves  by  Aristotle's  profound 
observation  that  the  superiority  of  poetry  over  history 
consists  in  its  possessing  a  higher  truth  and  a  higher  10 
seriousness  {(p^Xoaoipajrepov Ka}  aTiOudaiorspov)'.  Let  us  add, 
therefore,  to  what  we  have  said,  this:  that  the  substance 
and  matter  of  the  best  poetry  acquire  their  special  char- 
acter from  possessing,  in  an  eminent  degree,  truth  and  se- 
riousness. We  may  add  yet  further,  what  is  in  itself  15 
evident,  that  to  the  style  and  manner  of  the  best  poetry 
their  special  character,  their  accent,  is  given  by  their 
diction,  and,  even  yet  more,  by  their  movement.  And 
though  we  distinguish  between  the  two  characters,  the 
two  accents,  of  superiority,  yet  they  are  nevertheless  20 
vitally  connected  one  with  the  other.  The  superior 
character  of  truth  and  seriousness,  in  the  matter  and 
substance  of  the  best  poetry,  is  inseparable  from  the 
superiority  of  diction  and  movement  marking  its  style 
and  manner.  The  two  superiorities  are  closely  related,  25 
and  are  in  steadfast  proportion  one  to  the  other.  So 
far  as  high  poetic  truth  and  seriousness  are  wanting  to  a 
poet's  matter  and  substance,  so  far  also  we  may  be  sure, 
will  a  high  poetic  stamp  of  diction  and  movement  be  want- 
ing to  his  style  and  manner.  In  proportion  as  this  high  SO 
stamp  of  diction  and  movement,  again,  is  absent  from  a 
poet's  style  and  manner,  we  shall  find,  also,  that  high 
poetic  truth  and  seriousness  are  absent  from  liis  substance 
and  matter. 


EXPOSITION  195 

So  stated,  these  are  but  dry  generalities;  their  whole 
force  lies  in  their  application.  And  I  could  wish  every 
student  of  poetry  to  make  the  application  of  them  for 
himself.     Made  by  himself,  the  application  would  impress 

5  itself  upon  his  mind  far  more  deeply  than  made  by  me. 
Neither  will  my  limits  allow  me  to  make  any  full  applica- 
tion of  the  generalities  above  propounded ;  but  in  the  hope 
of  bringing  out,  at  any  rate,  some  significance  in  them,  and 
of  establishing  an  important  principle  more  firmly  by  their 

10  means,  I  will,  in  the  space  which  remains  to  me,  follow 
rapidly  from  the  commencement  the  course  of  our  English 
poetry  with  them  in  my  view. 


APPRECIATION 

Walter  Pater* 

MANY  attempts  have  been  made  by  writers  on  art  and 
poetry  to  define  beauty  in  the  abstract,  to  express 

15  it  in  the  most  general  terms,  to  find  a  universal  formula 
for  it.  The  value  of  these  attempts  has  most  often  been 
in  the  suggestive  and  penetrating  things  said  by  the  way. 
Such  discussions  help  us  very  little  to  enjoy  what  has  been 
well  done  in  art  or  poetry,  to  discriminate  between  what 

20  is  more  and  what  is  less  excellent  in  them,  or  to  use  words 
like  beauty,  excellence,  art,  poetry,  with  a  more  precise 
meaning  than  they  would  otherwise  have.     Beauty,  like 
all  other  qualities  represented  to  human  experience,  is  re- 
lative; and  the  definition  of  it  becomes  unmeaning  and 

25  useless  in  proportion  to  its  abstractness.     To  define  beauty, 
not  in  the  most  abstract,  but  in  the  most  concrete  terms 
*The  Renaissance,  Preface,  pp.  ix-xiii. 


196  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

possible,  to  find,  not  a  universal  formula  for  it,  but  the 
formula  which  expresses  most  adequately  this  or  that 
special  manifestation  of  it,  is  the  aim  of  the  true  student 
of  esthetics. 

f  "To  see  the  object  as  in  itself  it  really  is, "I  has  been  5 
justly  said  to  be  the  aim  of  all  true  criticism  whatever; 
and  in  esthetic  criticism  the  first  step  toward  seeing  one's 
object  as  it  really  is,  is  to  know  one's  own  impression  as  it 
really  is,  to  discriminate  it,  to  realize  it  distinctly.     The 
objects  with  which  esthetic  criticism  deals — music,  poetry,   10 
artistic  and  accomplished  forms  of  human  life — are  indeed 
receptacles  of  so  many  powers  or  forces :  they  possess,  like 
the  products  of  nature,  so  many  virtues  or  qualities.     What 
is  this  song  or  picture,  this  engaging  personality  presented 
in  life  or  in  a  book,  to  me  ?     What  effect  does  it  really  15 
produce  on  me?     Does  it  give  me  pleasure.?  and  if  so, 
what  sort  or  degree  of  pleasure  ?     How  is  my  nature  modi- 
fied by  its  presence,  and  under  its  influence  ?     The  answers 
to  these  questions  are  the  original  facts  with  which  the 
esthetic  critic  has  to  do;  and,  as  in  the  study  of  light,  of  20 
morals,  of  number,  one  must  realize  such  primary  data 
for  oneself,  or  not  at  all.     And  he  who  experiences  these 
impressions    strongly,    and    drives    directly    at    the    dis- 
crimination and  analysis  of  them,  has  no  need  to  trouble 
himself   with  the  abstract  question  what  beauty  is  in  it-  25 
self,  or  what  its  exact  relation  to  truth  or  experience — 
metaphysical  questions,  as  unprofitable  as  metaphysical 
questions  elsewhere.     He  may  pass  them  all  by  as  being, 
answerable  or  not,  of  no  interest  to  him. 

The  esthetic  critic,  then,  regards  all  the  objects  with  30 
which  he  has  to  do,  all  works  of  art,  and  the  fairer  forms 
of  nature  and  human  life,  as  powers  or  forces  producing 
pleasurable  sensations,  each  of  a  more  or  less  peculiar 
or  unique  kind.     This  influence  he  feels,  and  wishes  to 


EXPOSITION  197 

explain,  analyzing  it,  and  reducing  it  to  its  elements. 
To  him,  the  picture,  the  landscape,  the  engaging  person- 
ality in  life  or  in  a  book.  La  Gioconda,  the  hills  of  Carrara, 
Pico  of  Mirandola,  are  valuable  for  their  virtues,  as  we  say 

5  in  speaking  of  a  herb,  a  wine,  a  gem;  for  the  property  each 
has  of  affecting  one  with  a  special,  a  unique,  impression 
of  pleasure.  •  Our  education  becomes  complete  in  pro- 
portion as  our  susceptibility  to  these  impressions  increases 
in  depth  and  variety.     And  the  function  of  the  esthetic 

10  critic  is  to  distinguish,  analyze,  and  separate  from  its 
adjuncts,  the  virtue  by  which  a  picture,  a  landscape,  a 
fair  personality  in  life  or  in  a  book,  produces  this  special 
impression  of  beauty  or  pleasure,  to  indicate  what  the 
source  of  that  impression  is,  and  under  what  conditions 

15  it  is  experienced.  His  end  is  reached  when  he  has  dis- 
engaged that  virtue,  and  noted  it,  as  a  chemist  notes  some 
natural  element,  for  himself  and  others,  and  the  rule  for 
those  who  would  reach  this  end  is  stated  with  great  ex- 
actness in  the  words  of  a  recent  critic  of  Sainte-Beuve: 

20  ''De  se  borner  a  connaitre  de  pres  les  belles  choses^  et  a  s'en 
nourrir  en  exquis  amateurs,  en  humanistes  accomplis. " 

What  is  important,  then,  is  not  that  the  critic  should  pos- 
sess a  correct  abstract  definition  of  beauty  for  the  intellect, 
but  a  certain  kind  of  temperament,  the  power  of  being 

25  deeply  moved  by  the  presence  of  beautiful  objects.  He 
will  remember  always  that  beauty  exists  in  many  forms. 
To  him  all  periods,  types,  schools  of  taste,  are  in  themselves 
equal.  In  all  ages  there  have  been  some  excellent  work- 
men, and  some  excellent  work  done.     The  question  he 

30  asks  is  always: — In  whom  did  the  stir,  the  genius,  the 
sentiment  of  the  period  find  itself?  Where  was  the  re- 
ceptacle of  its  refinement,  its  elevation,  its  taste?  "The 
ages  are  all  equal,"  says  William  Blake,  "but  genius  is 
always  above  its  age." 


198  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Often  it  will  require  great  nicety  to  disengage  this 
virtue  from  the  commoner  elements  with  which  it  may  be 
found  in  combination.  Few  artists,  not  Goethe  or  Byron 
even,  work  quite  cleanly,  casting  off  all  debris,  and  leaving 
us  only  what  the  heat  of  their  imagination  has  wholly  5 
fused  and  transformed.  Take,  for  instance,  the  writings 
of  Wordsworth.  The  heat  of  his  genius,  entering  into  the 
substance  of  his  work,  has  crystallized  a  part,  but  only 
a  part,  of  it;  and  in  that  great  mass  of  verse  there  is  much 
which  might  well  be  forgotten.  But  scattered  up  and  10 
down  it,  sometimes  fusing  and  transforming  entire  com- 
positions, like  the  stanzas  on  Resolution  and  Independence 
and  the  ode  on  the  Recollections  of  ChiWiood,  sometimes, 
as  if  at  random,  depositing  a  fine  crystal  here  or  there,  in 
a  matter  it  does  not  wholly  search  through  and  transform,  15 
we  trace  the  action  of  his  unique,  incommunicable  faculty, 
that  strange,  mystical  sense  of  a  life  in  natural  things,  and 
of  man's  life  as  a  part  of  nature,  drawing  strength  and 
color  and  character  from  local  influences,  from  the  hills 
and  streams,  and  from  natural  sights  and  sounds.  Well!  20 
that  is  the  virtue,  the  active  principle  in  Wordsworth's 
poetry;  and  then  the  function  of  the  critic  of  Wordsworth 
is  to  follow  up  that  active  principle,  to  disengage  it,  to  mark 
the  degree  in  which  it  penetrates  his  verse. 

Suggestions:  Study  the  foregoing  essays  carefully,  in  con- 
nection with  each  other.  Look  up,  in  the  Standard  or  the  Century 
Dictionary  the  words  "art,"  "criticism,",  "beauty."  What 
new  meanings  do  you  find   for  these   words? 

Observe  that  each  critic  suggests  a  definite  way  of  criticizing 
any  work  of  art.  Explain,  in  your  own  words,  Arnold's  way. 
How  does  this  differ  from  Pater's?  Which  seems  to  you  the 
more  plausible  way  of  criticizing  ?     Which,  the  more  pi*acticable  ? 

Compare  Arnold's  paragraphs  with  Pater's.  In  what  are 
they  alike?  In  what  do  they  differ?  What  peculiarities,  if 
any,  do  you  observe  about  Pater's  sentences  ?     What  of  their 


EXPOSITION  199 

length?  their  construction?     Do  Pater's  sentences  please  you 
when  they  are  read  aloud? 

Which  do  you  consider  harder  to  understand,  Pater,  or  Ar- 
nold?    Give  at  least  two*  definite  reasons  for  your  opinion. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Write  a  criticism  of  your  favorite  poem.  Give  a  "historical 
estimate"   and   a   "personal   estimate." 

Write  an  "appreciation"  of  a  picture;  of  a  landscape;  of  a 
"fair  personality  in  life  or  in  a  book." 

Criticize,  by  any  one  of  Arnold's  estimates,  a  statue;  a  piece 
of  music. 


LOVE'S  LABOURS  LOST 

Walter  Pater* 

T  OVE'S  LABOURS  LOST  is  one  of  the  earliest  of 
JL^  Shakespeare's  dramas,  and  has  many  of  the  peculi- 
arities of  his  poems,  which  are  also  the  work  of  his  earlier 
life.     The  opening  speech  of  the  king  on  the  immortality 

5  of  fame — on  the  triumph  of  fame  over  death — and  the 
nobler  parts  of  Biron,  display  something  of  the  monu- 
mental style  of  Shakespeare's  sonnets,  and  are  not  without 
their  conceits  of  thought  and  expression.  This  connexion 
of  Love's  Labours    Lost    with    Shakespeare's    poems    is 

10  further  enforced  by  the  actual  insertion  in  it  of  three  son- 
nets and  a  faultless  song;  which,  in  accordance  with  his 
practice  in  other  plays,  are  inwoven  into  the  argument 
of  the  piece  and,  like  the  golden  ornaments  of  a  fair  woman, 
give  it  a  peculiar  air  of  distinction.     There  is  merriment 

15  in  it  also,  with  choice  illustrations  of  both  wit  and  humor; 
a  laughter,  often  exquisite,  ringing,  if  faintly,  yet  as 
*  Appreciations. 


200  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

genuine  laughter  still,  though  sometimes  sinking  into 
mere  burlesque,  which  has  not  lasted  quite  so  well.  And 
Shakespeare  brings  a  serious  effect  out  of  the  trifling  of  his 
characters.  A  dainty  love-making  is  interchanged  with 
the  more  cumbrous  play:  below  the  many  artifices  of  5 
Biron's  amorous  speeches  we  may  trace  sometimes  the 
"unutterable  longing;"  and  the  lines  in  which  Katherine 
describes  the  blighting  through  love  of  her  younger  sister 
are  one  of  the  most  touching  things  in  older  literature.* 
Again,  how  many  echoes  seem  awakened  by  those  strange  10 
words,  actually  said  in  jest! — "The  sweet  war-man 
(Hector  of  Troy)  is  dead  and  rotten;  sweet  chucks,  beat 
not  the  bones  of  the  buried:  when  he  breathed,  he  was  a 
man!" — words  which  may  remind  us  of  Shakespeare's 
own  epitaph.  In  the  last  scene,  an  ingenious  turn  is  given  15 
to  the  action,  so  that  the  piece  does  not  conclude  after  the 
manner  of  other  comedies : 

"Our  wooing  doth  not  end  like  an  old  play; 
Jack  hath  not  Jill:" 

and  Shakespeare  strikes  a  passionate  note  across  it  at  last,  20 
in  the  entrance  of  the  messenger,  who  announces  to  the 
princess  that  the  king  her  father  is  suddenly  dead. 

The  merely  dramatic  interest  of  the  piece  is  slight  enough, 
only  just  sufficient,  indeed,  to  form  the  vehicle  of  its  wit 
and  poetry.  The  scene — a  park  of  the  King  of  Navarre —  2,5 
is  unaltered  throughout;  and  the  unity  of  the  play  is  not  so 
much  the  unity  of  a  drama  as  that  of  a  series  of  pictorial 
groups,  in  which  the  same  figures  reappear,  in  different 
combinations  but  on  the  same  background.  It  is  as  if 
Shakespeare  had  intended  to  bind  together,  by  some  in-  30 
ventive  conceit,  the  devices  of  an  ancient  tapestry,  and 
give  voices  to  its  figures.     On   one   side,  a  fair  palace; 

♦Act  V.  Scene  ii. 


EXPOSITION  201 

on  the  other,  the  tents  of  the  Princess  of  France,  who  has 
come  on  an  embassy  from  her  father  to  the  King  of  Navarre; 
in  the  midst,  a  wide  space  of  smooth  grass.  The  same 
personages  are  combined  over  and  over  again  into  a  series 
5  of  gallant  scenes — the  princess,  the  three  masked  ladies, 
the  quaint,  pedantic  king;  one  of  those  amiable  kings 
men  have  never  loved  enough,  whose  serious  occupation 
with  the  things  of  the  mind  seems,  by  contrast  with  the 
more   usual   forms   of   kingship,    like   frivolity   or   play. 

10  Some  of  the  figures  are  grotesque  merely,  and  all  the  male 
ones  at  least,  a  little  fantastic.  Certain  objects  reap- 
pearing from  scene  to  scene — love-letters  crammed  with 
verses  to  the  margin,  and  lover's  toys — hint  obscurely  at 
some   story   of   intrigue.     Between   these   groups,    on    a 

15  smaller  scale,  come  the  slighter  and  more  homely  episodes, 
with  Sir  Nathaniel  the  curate,  the  country-maid  Jaquenetta, 
Moth  or  Mote  the  elfin-page,  with  Hiems  and  Ver,  who 
recite  "the  dialogue  that  the  two  learned  men  have  com- 
piled in  praise  of  the  owl  and  the  cuckoo."     The  ladies 

20  are  lodged  in  tents,  because  the  king,  like  the  princess 
of  the  modern  poet's  fancy,  has  taken  a  vow 

"To  make  his  court  a  little  Academe," 

and  for  three  years'  space  no  woman  may  come  within  a 
mile  of  it;  and  the  play  shows  how  this  artificial  attempt 

25  was  broken  through.  For  the  king  and  his  three  fellow- 
scholars  are  of  course  soon  forsworn,  and  turn  to  writing 
sonnets,  each  to  his  chosen  lady.  These  fellow-scholars 
of  the  king — " quaint  votaries  of  science"  at  first,  afterward 
"affection's  men-at-arms" — three  youthful  knights,  gallant, 

30  amorous,  chivalrous,  but  also  a  little  affected,  sporting 
always  a  curious  foppery  of  language,  are,  throughout, 
the  leading  figures  in  the  foreground;  one  of  them,  in 
particular,  being  more  carefully  depicted  than  the  others, 


202  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  in  himself  very  noticeable — a  portrait  with  somewhat 
puzzling  manner  and  expression,  which  at  once  catches 
the  eye  irresistibly  and  keeps  it  fixed. 

Play  is  often  that  about  which  people  are  most  serious; 
and  the  humorist  may  observe  how,  under  all  love  of  5 
playthings,  there  is  almost  always  hidden  an  appreciation 
of  something  really  engaging  and  delightful.  This  is  true 
always  of  the  toys  of  children :  it  is  often  true  of  the  play- 
things of  grown-up  people,  their  vanities,  their  fopperies 
even,  their  lighter  loves;  the  cynic  would  add  their  pursuit  10 
of  fame.  Certainly,  this  is  true  without  exception  of  the 
playthings  of  a  past  age,  which  to  those  who  succeed  it  are 
always  full  of  a  pensive  interest — old  manners,  old  dresses, 
old  houses.  For  what  is  called  fashion  in  these  matters 
occupies,  in  each  age,  much  of  the  care  of  many  of  the  most  l  j 
discerning  people,  furnishing  them  with  a  kind  of  mirror 
of  their  real  inward  refinements,  and  their  capacity  for 
selection.  Such  modes  or  fashions  are,  at  their  best,  an 
example  of  the  artistic  predominance  of  form  over  matter; 
of  the  manner  of  the  doing  of  it  over  the  thing  done;  and  20 
have  a  beauty  of  their  own.  It  is  so  with  that  old  euphuism 
of  the  Elizabethan  age — that  pride  of  dainty  language  and 
curious  expression,  which  it  is  very  easy  to  ridicule,  but 
which  had  below  it  a  real  sense  of  fitness  and  nicety;  and 
which,  as  we  see  in  this  very  play,  and  still  more  clearly  25 
in  the  sonnets,  had  some  fascination  for  the  young  Shake- 
speare himself.  It  is  this  foppery  of  delicate  language, 
this  fashionable  plaything  of  his  time,  with  which  Shakes- 
peare is  occupied  in  Love's  Labours  Lost.  He  shows  us  the 
manner  in  all  its  stages;  passing  from  the  grotesque  and  30 
vulgar  pedantry  of  Holofernes,  through  the  extravagant 
but  polished  caricature  of  Armado,  to  become  the  peculiar 
characteristic  of  a  real  though  still  quaint  poetry  in  Biron 
himself,  who  is  still  chargeable  even  aX  his  best  with  just 


EXPOSITION  203 

a  little  affectation.  As  Shakespeare  laughs  broadly  at  it 
in  Hotof ernes  or  Armado,  so  he  is  the  analyst  of  its  curious 
charm  in  Biron;  and  this  analysis  involves  a  delicate 
raillery  by  Shakespeare  himself  at  his  own  chosen  manner. 

5  This  "foppery"  of  Shakespeare's  day  had,  then,  its 
really  delightful  side,  a  quality  in  no  sense  "affected," 
by  which  it  satisfies  a  real  instinct  in  our  minds — the  fancy 
so  many  of  us  have  for  an  exquisite  and  curious  skill  in 
the  use  of  words.     Biron   is   the  perfect  flower  of  this 

10  manner: 

"A  man  of  fire-new  words,  fashion's  own  knight:" 

as  he  describes  Armado,  in  terms  which  are  really  appli- 
cable to  himself.  In  him  this  manner  blends  with  a  true 
gallantry  of  nature,  and  an  affectionate  complaisance  and 

15  grace.  He  has  at  times  some  of  its  extravagance  or  cari- 
cature also,  but  the  shades  of  expression  by  which  he  passes 
from  this  to  the  "golden  cadence"  of  Shakespeare's  own 
most  characteristic  verse,  are  so  fine,  that  it  is  sometimes 
difficult  to  trace  them.     What  is  a  vulgarity  in  Holof ernes, 

20  and  a  caricature  in  Armado,  refines  itself  with  him  into 
the  expression  of  a  nature  truly  and  inwardly  bent  upon  a 
form  of  delicate  perfection,  and  is  accompanied  by  a  real 
insight  into  the  laws  which  determine  what  is  exquisite 
in  language,  and  their  root  in  the  nature  of  things.     He 

25  can  appreciate  quite  the  opposite  style — 

"In  russet  yeas,  and  honest  kersey  noes;' 

he  knows  the  first  lay  of  pathos,  that 

"Honest  plain  words  best  suit  the  ear  of  grief." 

He  delights- in  his  own  rapidity  of  intuition;  and,  in  har- 
30   mony  with  the  half-sensuous  philosophy  of  the  sonnets,  ex- 
alts, a  little  scornfully,  in  many  memorable  expressions, 
the  judgment  of  the  senses  above  all  slower,  more  toil- 


204  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

some  means  of  knowledge,  scorning  some  who  fail  to  see 
things  only  because  they  are  so  clear: 

"So  ere  you  find  where  light  in  darkness  lies, 
Your  light  grows  dark  by  losing  of  your  eyes:" 

as   with   some   German   commentators   on   Shakespeare.   5 
Appealing  always  to  actual  sensation  from  men's  affected 
theories,  he  might  seem  to  despise  learning;  as,  indeed, 
he  has  taken  up  his  deep  studies  partly  in  sport,  and 
demands  always   the  profit  of  learning  in  renewed  en- 
joyment.    Yet  he  surprises  us  from  time  to  time  by  in-   10 
tuitions  which  could  come  only  from  a  deep  experience 
and  power  of  observation;  and  men  listen  to  him,  old  and 
young,  in  spite  of  themselves.     He  is  quickly  impressible 
to  the  slightest  clouding  of  the  spirits  in  social  intercourse, 
and  has  his  moments  of  extreme  seriousness:  his  trial-   15 
task  may  well  be,  as  Rosaline  puts  it — 

"To  enforce  the  pained  impotent  to  smile. " 

But  still,  through  all,  he  is  true  to  his  chosen  manner: 
that  gloss  of  dainty  language  is  a  second  nature  with  him: 
even  at  his  best  he  is  not  without  a  certain  artifice:  the  20 
trick  of  playing  on  words  never  deserts  him;  and  Shake- 
speare, in  whose  own  genius  there  is  an  element  of  this 
very  quality,  shows  us  in  this  graceful,  and,  as  it  seems, 
studied,  portrait,  his  enjoyment  of  it. 

As  happens  with  every  true  dramatist,  Shakespeare  25 
is  for  the  most  part  hidden  behind  the  persons  of  his 
creation.  Yet  there  are  certain  of  his  characters  in  which 
we  feel  that  there  is  something  of  self-portraiture.  And 
it  is  not  so  much  in  his  grander,  more  subtle  and  ingenious 
creations  that  we  feel  this — in  Hamlet  and  King  Lear —  30 
as  in  those  slighter  and  more  spontaneously  developed 
figures,  who,  while  far  from  playing  principal  parts,  are 
yet  distinguished  by  a  peculiar  happiness  and  delicate 


EXPOSITION  205 

ease  in  the  drawing  of  them;  figures  which  possess,  above 
all,  that  winning  attractiveness  which  there  is  no  man  but 
would  willingly  exercise,  and  which  resemble  those  works 
of  art  which,  though  not  meant  to  be  very  great  or  imposing, 
5  are  yet  wrought  of  the  choicest  material.  Mercutio,  in 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  belongs  to  this  group  of  Shakespeare's 
characters — versatile,  mercurial  people,  such  as  make 
good  actors,  and  in  whom  the 

"Nimble  spirits  of  the  arteries," 

10  the  finer  but  still  merely  animal  elements  of  great  wit 
predominate.  A  careful  delineation  of  minor,  yet  ex- 
pressive, traits  seems  to  mark  them  out  as  the  characters 
of  his  predilection;  and  it  is  hard  not  to  identify  him  with 
these  more  than  with  others.     Biron,  in  Love's  Labours 

15  Lost,  is  perhaps  the  most  striking  member  of  this  group.  In 
this  character,  which  is  never  quite  in  touch,  never  quite 
on  a  perfect  level  of  understanding,  with  the  other  persons 
of  the  play,  we  see,  perhaps,  a  reflex  of  Shakespeare 
himself,  when  he  has  just  become  able  to  stand  aside  from 

20  and  estimate  the  first  period  of  his  poetry. 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE 

Walter  Pater* 

IN  Measure  for  Measure,  as  in  some  others  of  his  plays, 
Shakespeare  has   remodeled   an  earlier  and  some- 
what rough  composition  to" finer  issues,"  suffering  much 
to  remain  as  it  had  come  from  the  less  skillful  hand,  and 
25  not  raising  the  whole  of  his  work  to  an  equal  degree  of 
^Apyreciations. 


206  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

intensity.  Hence  perhaps  some  of  that  depth  and  weighti- 
ness  which  makes  this  play  so  impressive,  as  with  the  true 
seal  of  experience,  like  a  fragment  of  life  itself,  rough  and 
disjointed  indeed,  but  forced  to  yield  in  places  its  pro- 
founder  meaning.  In  Measure  for  Measure,  in  contrast  5 
with  the  flawless  execution  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Shake- 
speare has  spent  his  art  in  just  enough  modification  of 
the  scheme  of  the  older  play  to  make  it  exponent  of  this 
purpose,  adapting  its  terrible  essential  incidents,  so  that 
Coleridge  found  it  the  only  painful  work  among  Shake-  10 
speare's  dramas,  and  leaving  for  the  reader  of  to-day 
more  than  the  usual  number  of  difficult  expressions; 
but  infusing  a  lavish  color  and  a  profound  significance 
into  it,  so  that  under  his  touch  certain  select  portions  of 
it  rise  far  above  the  level  of  all  but  his  own  best  poetry,  15 
and  working  out  of  it  a  morality  so  characteristic  that  the 
play  might  well  pass  for  the  central  expression  of  his 
moral  judgments.  It  remains  a  comedy,  as  indeed  is 
congruous  with  the  bland,  half-humorous  equity  which 
informs  the  whole  composition,  sinking  from  the  heights  20 
of  sorrow  and  terror  into  the  rough  scheme  of  the  earlier 
piece;  yet  it  is  hardly  less  full  of  what  is  really  tragic  in 
man's  existence  than  if  Claudio  had  indeed  "stooped  to 
death."  Even  the  humorous  concluding  scenes  have 
traits  of  special  grace,  retaining  in  less  emphatic  passages  25 
a  stray  line  or  word  of  power,  as  it  seems,  so  that  we  watch 
to  the  end  for  the  traces  where  the  nobler  hand  has  glanced 
along,  leaving  its  vestiges,  as  if  accidentally  or  wastefully, 
in  the  rising  of  the  style. 

The    interest    of   Measure  for   Measure,    therefore,    is   30 
partly  that  of  an  old  story  told  over  again.     We  measure 
with  curiosity  that  variety  of  resources  which  has  enabled 
Shakespeare  to   refashion   the  original   material   with   a 
higher  motive;  adding  to  the  intricacy  of  the  piece,  yet  so 


EXPOSITION  207 

modifying  its  structure  as  to  give  the  whole  almost  the 
unity  of  a  single  scene;  leading,  by  the  light  of  a  philosophy 
which  dwells  much  on  what  is  complex  and  subtle  in  our 
nature,  a  true  human  propriety  to  its  strange  and  unex- 
5  pected  turns  of  feeling  and  character,  to  incidents  so 
difficult  as  the  fall  of  Angelo,  and  the  subsequent  recon- 
ciliation of  Isabella,  so  that  she  pleads  successfully  for  his 
life.  It  was  from  Whetstone,  a  contemporary  English 
writer,  that  Shakespeare  derived  the  outline  of  Cinthio's 

10  "rare  history"  of  Promos  and  Cassandra,  one  of  that 
numerous  class  of  Italian  stories,  like  Boccaccio's  Tancred 
of  Salerno,  in  which  the  mere  energy  of  southern  passion 
has  everything  its  own  way,  and  which,  though  they  may 
repel  many  a  northern  reader  by  a  certain  crudity  in  their 

15  coloring,  seem  to  have  been  full  of  fascination  for  the 
Elizabethan  age.  This  story,  as  it .  appears  in  Whet- 
stone's endless  comedy,  is  almost  as  rough  as  the  roughest 
episode  of  actual  criminal  life.  But  the  play  seems  never 
to  have  been  acted,  and  some  time  after  its  publication 

20  Whetstone  himself  turned  the  thing  into  a  tale,  included 
in  his  Heptameron  of  Civil  Discourses,  where  it  still  figures 
as  a  genuine  piece,  with  touches  of  undesigned  poetry,  a 
quaint  field-flower  here  and  there  of  diction  or  sentiment, 
the  whole  strung  up  to  an  effective  brevity,  and  with  the 

25  fragrance  of  that  admirable  age  of  literature  all  about  it. 
Here,  then,  there  is  something  of  the  original  Italian 
color:  in  this  narrative  Shakespeare  may  well  have  caught 
the  first  glimpse  of  a  composition  with  nobler  proportions; 
and  some  artless  sketch  from  his  own  hand,  perhaps, 

30  putting  together  his  first  impressions,  insinuated  itself 
between  Whetstone's  work  and  the  play  as  we  actually 
read  it.  Out  of  these  insignificant  sources  Shakespeare's 
play  rises,  full  of  solemn  expression,  and  with  a  profoundly 
designed  beauty,  the  new  body  of  a  higher,  though  some- 


208  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

times  remote  and  difficult  poetry,  escaping  from  the  im- 
perfect relics  of  the  old  story,  yet  not  wholly  transformed, 
and  even  as  it  stands  but  the  preparation  only,  we  might 
think,  of  a  still  more  imposing  design.  For  once  we  have 
in  it  a  real  example  of  that  sort  of  writing  which  is  some-  5 
times  described  as  suggestive,  and  which  by  the  help  of 
certain  subtly  calculated  hints  only,  brings  into  distinct 
shape  the  reader's  own  half-developed  imaginings.  Often 
the  quality  is  attributed  to  writing  merely  vague  and  un- 
realized, but  in  Measure  for  Measure,  quite  certainly,  IC 
Shakespeare  has  directed  the  attention  of  sympathetic 
readers  along  certain  channels  of  meditation  beyond  the 
immediate  scope  of  his  work. 

Measure  for  Measure,  therefore,  by  the  quality  of  these 
higher  designs,  woven  by  his  strange  magic  on  a  texture   15 
of  poorer  quality,  is  hardly  less  indicative  than  Hamlet 
even,  of  Shakespeare's  reason,  of  his  power  of  moral  in- 
terpretation.    It  deals,  not  like  Hamlet  with  the  problems 
which  beset  one  of  exceptional  temperament,  but  with 
mere  human   nature.     It   brings   before  us   a  group   of  20 
persons,  attractive,  full  of  desire,  vessels  of  the  genial, 
seed-bearing  powers  of  nature,  a  gaudy  existence  flowering 
out  over  the  old  court  and  city  of  Vienna,  a  spectacle  of 
the  fulness  and  pride  of  life  which  to  some  may  seem  to 
touch  the  verge  of  wantonness.     Behind  this  group  of  25 
people,  behind  their  various  action,  Shakespeare  inspires 
in  us  the  sense  of  a  strong  tyranny  of  nature  and  circum- 
stance.    Then  what  shall  there  be  on  this  side  of  it — 
on  our  side,  the  spectator's  side,  of  this  painted  screen, 
with  its  puppets  who  are  really  glad  or  sorry  all  the  time  ?  30 
what  philosophy  of  life,  what  sort  of  equity  ? 

Stimulated  to  read  more  carefully  by  Shakespeare's 
own  profounder  touches,  the  reader  will  note  the  vivid 
reality,  the  subtle  interchange  of  light  and  shade,  the  strong- 


EXPOSITION  209 

ly  contrasted  characters  of  this  group  of  persons,  passing 
across  the  stage  so  quickly.  The  sHghtest  of  them  is  at 
least  not  ill-natured :  the  meanest  of  them  can  put  forth  a 
plea  for  existence — Truly,  sir,  I  am  a  poor  fellow  thai 
5  would  live! — they  are  never  sure  of  themselves,  even  in 
the  strong  tower  of  a  cold,  unimpressible  nature:  they  are 
capable  of  many  friendships  and  of  a  true  dignity  in  danger, 
giving  each  other  a  sympathetic,  if  transitory,  regret — one 
sorry  that  another  "should  be  foolishly  lost  at  a  game  of 

10  tick-tack."  Words  which  seems  to  exhaust  man's 
deepest  sentiment  concerning  death  and  life  are  put  on  the 
lips  of  a  gilded,  witless  youth;  and  the  saintly  Isabella 
feels  fire  creep  along  her,  kindling  her  tongue  to  eloquence 
at  the  suggestion  of  shame.     In  places  the  shadow  deepens : 

15  death  intrudes  itself  on  the  scene,  as  among  other  things 
"a  great  disguiser,"  blanching  the  features  of  youth  and 
spoiling  its  goodly  hair,  touching  the  fine  Claudio  even 
with  its  disgraceful  associations.  As  in  Orcagna's  fresco 
at  Pisa,   it   comes   capriciously,   giving   many   and   long 

20  reprieves  to  Barnardine,  who  has  been  waiting  for  it  nine 
years  in  prison,  taking  another  thence  by  fever,  another 
by  mistake  of  judgment,  embracing  others  in  the  midst 
of  their  music  and  song.  The  little  mirror  of  existence, 
which  reflects  to  each  for  a  moment  the  stage  on  which  he 

25  plays,  is  broken  at  last  by  a  capricious  accident;  while 
all  alike,  in  their  yearning  for  untasted  enjoyment,  are 
really  discounting  their  days,  grasping  so  hastily  and 
accepting  so  inexactly  the  precious  pieces.  The  Duke's 
quaint  but  excellent  moralizing  at  the  beginning  of  the 

30  third  act  does  but  express,  like  the  chorus  of  a  Greek  play, 
the  spirit  of  the  passing  incidents.  To  him  in  Shakespeare's 
play,  to  a  few  here  and  there  in  the  actual  world,  this 
strange  practical  paradox  of  our  life,  so  unwise  in  its  eager 
haste,  reveals  itself  in  all  its  clearness. 


210  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

The  Duke  disguised  as  a  friar,  with  his  curious  moraliz- 
ing on  life  and  death,  and  Isabella  in  her  first  mood  of 
renunciation,  a  thing  "ensky'd  and  sainted,"  coipe  with 
the  quiet  of  the  cloister  as  a  relief  to  this  lust  and  pride 
of  life:  like  some  gray  monastic  picture  hung  on  the  wall  5 
of  a  gaudy  room,  their  presence  cools  the  heated  air  of  the 
piece.  For  a  moment  we  are  within  the  placid  conventual 
walls,  whither  they  fancy  at  first  that  the  Duke  has  come 
as  a  man  crossed  in  love,  with  Friar  Thomas  and  Friar 
Peter,  calling  each  other  by  their  homely,  English  names,  10 
or  at  the  nunnery  among  the  novices,  with  their  little 
limited  privileges,  where 

"If  you  speak  you  must  not  show  your  face, 
Or  if  you  show  your  face  you  must  not  speak. " 

Not  less  precious  for  this  relief  in  the  general  structure   15 
of  the  piece,  than  for  its  own  peculiar  graces  is  the  episode 
of  Mariana,  a  creature  wholly  of  Shakespeare's  invention, 
told,  by  way  of  interlude,  in  subdued  prose.     The  moated 
grange,  with  its  dejected  mistress,  its  long,  listless,  discon- 
tented days;  where  we  hear  only  the  voice  of  a  boy  broken   20 
off  suddenly  in  the  midst  of  one  of  the  loveliest  songs  of 
Shakespeare,  or  of  Shakespeare's  school,*  is  the  pleasantest 
of  many  glimpses  we  get  here  of  pleasant  places — the  fields 
without  the  town,  Angelo's  garden-house,  the  consecrated 
fountain.    Indirectly  it  has  suggested  two  of  the  most  per-   25 
feet  compositions  among  the  poetry  of  our  own  generation. 
Again  it  is  a  picture  within  a  picture,  but  with  fainter 
lines  and  a  grayer  atmosphere:  we  have  here  the  same 
"passions,    the    same   wrongs,    the   same    continuance   of 
affection,  the  same  crying  out  upon  death,  as  in  the  nearer  30 
and  larger  piece,  though  softened,  and  reduced  to  the 
mood  of  a  more  dreamy  scene. 

Of  Angelo  we  may  feel  at  first  sight  inclined  to  say  only 
♦Fletcher,  in  the  Bloody  Brother,  gives  the  rest  of  it. 


EXPOSITION  211 

guarda  e  passa!  or  to  ask  whether  he  is  indeed  psychologic- 
ally possible.  In  the  old  story,  he  figures  as  an  em- 
bodiment of  pure  and  unmodified  evil,  like  " Hyliogabalus 
of  Rome  or  Denis  of  Sicyll. "  But  the  embodiment  of  pure 
5  evil  is  no  proper  subject  of  art,  and  Shakespeare,  in  the 
spirit  of  a  philosophy  which  dwells  much  on  the  com- 
plications of  outward  circumstance  with  men's  inclinations, 
turns  into  a  subtle  study  in  casuistry  this  incident  of  the 
austere  judge  fallen  suddenly  into  utmost  corruption  by  a 

10  momentary  contact  with  supreme  purity.  But  the  main 
interest  in  Measure  for  Measure  is  not,  as  in  Promos  and 
Cassandra,  in  the  relation  of  Isabella  and  Angelo,  but  rather 
in  the  relation  of  Claudio  and  Isabella. 

Greek  tragedy  in  some  of  its  noblest  products  has  taken 

15  for  its  theme  the  love  of  a  sister,  a  sentiment  unimpassioned 
indeed,  purifying  by  the  very  spectacle  of  its  passionless- 
ness,  but  capable  of  a  fierce  and  almost  animal  strength 
if  informed  for  a  moment  by  pity  and  regret.  At  first 
Isabella  comes  upon  the  scene  as  a  tranquilizing  influence 

20  in  it.  But  Shakespeare,  in  the  development  of  the  action, 
brings  quite  different  and  unexpected  qualities  out  of 
her.  It  is  his  characteristic  poetry  to  expose  this  cold, 
chastened  personality,  respected  even  by  the  worldly 
Lucio  as   *' something  ensky'd  and  sainted,   and  almost 

25  an  immortal  spirit,"  to  two  sharp,  shameful  trials,  ana 
wring  out  of  her  fiery,  revealing  eloquence.  Thrown 
into  the  terrible  dilemma  of  the  piece,  called  upon  to 
sacrifice  that  cloistral  whiteness  to  sisterly  affection,  be- 
come in  a  moment  the  ground  of  strong,  contending  passions 

30  she  develops  a  new  character  and  shows  herself  suddenly 
of  kindred  with  those  strangely  conceived  women,  like 
Webster's  Vittoria,  who  unite  to  a  seductive  sweetness 
something  of  a  dangerous  and  tigerlike  changefulness  of 
feeling.     The  swift,  vindictive  anger  leaps,  like  a  white 


212  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

flame,  into  this  white  spirit,  and,  stripped  in  a  moment 
of  all  convention,  she  stands  before  us  clear,  detached, 
columnar,  among  the  tender  frailties  of  the  piece.  Cassan- 
dra, the  original  of  Isabella  in  Whetstone's  tale,  with  the 
purpose  of  the  Roman  Lucretia  in  her  mind,  yields  grace-  5 
fully  enough  to  the  conditions  of  her  brother's  safety;  and 
to  the  lighter  reader  of  Shakespeare  there  may  seem 
something  harshly  conceived,  or  psychologically  im- 
possible even,  in  the  suddenness  of  the  change  wrought  in 
her,  as  Claudio  welcomes  for  a  moment  the  chance  of  10 
life  through  her  compliance  with  Angelo's  will,  as  in 
words  less  finely  handled  than  in  the  preceding  scene. 
The  play,  though  still  not  without  traces  of  nobler  handi- 
work, sinks  down,  as  we  know,  at  last  into  almost  homely 
comedy,  and  it  might  be  supposed  that  just  here  the  15 
grander  manner  deserted  it.  But  the  skill  with  which 
Isabella  plays  upon  Claudio's  well-recognized  sense  of 
honor,  and  endeavors  by  means  of  that  to  insure  him 
beforehand  from  the  acceptance  of  life  on  baser  terms, 
indicates  no  coming  laxity  of  hand  just  in  this  place.  It  20 
was  rather  that  there  rose  in  Shakespeare's  conception,  as 
there  may  for  the  reader,  as  there  certainly  would  in  any 
good  acting  of  the  part,  something  of  that  terror,  the  seek- 
ing for  which  is  one  of  the  notes  of  romanticism  in  Shake- 
speare and  his  circle.  The  stream  of  ardent  natural  25 
affection,  poured  as  sudden  hatred  upon  the  youth  con- 
demned to  die,  adds  an  additional  note  of  expression  to 
the  horror  of  the  prison  where  so  much  of  the  scene  takes 
place.  It  is  not  here  only  that  Shakespeare  has  con- 
ceived of  such  extreme  anger  and  pity  as  putting  a  sort  of  30 
genius  into  simple  women,  so  that  their  "lips  drop  elo- 
quence," and  their  intuitions  interpret  that  which  is 
often  too  hard  or  fine  for  manlier  reason ;  and  it  is  Isabella 
with  her  grand  imaginative  diction,  and  that  poetry  laid 


EXPOSITION  213 

upon  the  "prone  and  speechless  dialect"  there  is  in  mere 
youth  itself,  who  gives  utterance  to  the  equity,  the  finer 
judgments  of  the  piece  on  men  and  things. 

From  behind  this  group  with  its  subtle  lights  and  shades, 
5  its  poetry,  its  impressive  contrasts,  Shakespeare,  as  I 
said,  conveys  to  us  a  strong  sense  of  the  tyranny  of  nature 
and  circumstance  over  human  action.  The  most  power- 
ful expressions  of  this  side  of  experience  might  be  found 
here.     The  bloodless,  impassible  temperament  does  but 

10  wait  for  its  opportunity,  for  the  almost  accidental  coherence 
of  time  and  place,  and  place  with  wishing,  to  annul  its 
long  and  patient  discipline,  and  become  in  a  moment 
the  very  Opposite  of  that  which  under  ordinary  conditions 
it  seemed  to  be,  even  to  itself.     The  mere  resolute  self- 

15  assertion  of  the  blood  brings  to  others  special  temptations, 
temptations  which,  as  defects  or  overgrowths,  lie  in  the 
very  qualities  which  make  them  otherwise  imposing  or 
attractive;  the  very  advantage  of  men's  gifts  of  intellect 
or  sentiment  being  dependent  on  a  balance  in  their  use  so 

20  delicate  that  men  hardly  maintain  it  always.  Something 
also  must  be  conceded  to  influences  merely  physical,  to 
the  complexion  of  the  heavens,  the  skyey  influences, 
shifting  as  the  stars  shift;  as  something  also  to  the  mere 
caprice  of  men  exercised  over  each  other  in  the  dispensa- 

25  tions  of  social  or  political  order,  to  the  change  which  makes 
the  life  or  death  of  Claudio  dependent  on  Angelo's  will. 

The  many  veins  of  thought  which  render  the  poetry  of 
this  play  so  weighty  and  impressive  unite  in  the  image 
of  Claudio,  a  flowerlike  young  man,  whom,  prompted  by  a 

30  few  hints  from  Shakespeare,  the  imagination  easily 
clothes  with  all  the  bravery  of  youth,  as  he  crosses  the 
stage  before  us  on  his  way  to  death,  coming  so  hastily 
to  the  end  of  his  pilgrimage.  Set  in  the  horrible  blackness 
of  the  prison,  with  its  various  forms  of  unsightly  death, 


214  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

this  flower  seems  the  braver.  Fallen  by  "prompture  of 
the  blood,"  the  victim  of  a  suddenly  revived  law  against 
the  common  fault  of  youth  like  this,  he  finds  his  life 
forfeited  as  if  by  the  chance  of  a  lottery.  With  that  in- 
stinctive clinging  to  life,  which  breaks  through  the  subtlest  5 
casuistries  of  monk  or  sage  apologizing  for  an  early  death, 
he  welcomes  for  a  moment  the  chance  of  life  through  his 
sister's  shame,  though  he  revolts  hardly  less  from  the  notion 
of  perpetual  imprisonment  so  repulsive  to  the  buoyant 
energy  of  youth.  Familiarized,  by  the  words  alike  of  10 
friends  and  the  indifferent,  to  the  thought  of  death,  he 
becomes  gentle  and  subdued  indeed,  yet  more  perhaps 
through  pride  than  real  resignation,  and  would  go  down 
to  darkness  at  last  hard  and  unblinded.  Called  upon 
suddenly  to  encounter  his  fate,  looking  with  keen  and  15 
resolute  profile  straight  before  him,  he  gives  utterance  to 
some  of  the  central  truths  of  human  feeling,  the  sincere, 
concentrated  expression  of  the  recoiling  flesh.  Thoughts 
as  profound  and  poetical  as  Hamlet's  arise  in  him;  and 
but  for  [the  accidental  arrest  of  sentence  he  would  descend  20 
into  the  dust,  a  mere  gilded,  idle  flower  of  youth  indeed, 
but  with  what  are  perhaps  the  most  eloquent  of  all  Shake- 
speare's words  upon  his  lips. 

As  Shakespeare  in  Measure  for  Measure  has  refashioned, 
after  a  nobler  pattern,  materials  already  at  hand,  so  that  25 
the  relics  of  other  men's  poetry  are  incorporated  into  his 
perfect  work,  so  traces  of  the  old  "morality,"  that  early 
form  of  dramatic  composition  which  had  for  its  function 
the  inculcating  of  some  moral  theme,  survive  in  it  also, 
and  give  it  a  peculiar  ethical  interest.  This  ethical  30 
interest,  though  it  can  escape  no  attentive  reader,  yet, 
in  accordance  with  that  artistic  law  which  demands  the 
predominance  of  form  everywhere  over  the  mere  matter 
of  subject  handled,  is  not  to  be  wholly  separated  from 


EXPOSITION  215 

the  special  circumstances,  necessities,  embarrassments,  of 
these  particular  dramatic  persons.  The  old  "moralities" 
exemplified  most  often  some  rough-and-ready  lesson. 
Here  the  very  intricacy  and  subtlety  of  the  moral  world 
5  itself,  the  difficulty  of  seizing  the  true  relations  of  so 
complex  a  material,  the  difficulty  of  just  judgment,  of 
judgment  that  shall  not  be  unjust,  are  the  lessons  conveyed. 
Even  in  Whetstone's  old  story  this  peculiar  vein  of  moraliz- 
ing comes  to  the  surface :  even  there,  we  notice  the  tendency 

10  to  dwell  on  mixed  motives,  the  contending  issues  of  action, 
the  presence  of  virtues  and  vices  alike  in  unexpected 
places,  on  "the  hard  choice  of  two  evils,"  and  on  "im- 
prisoning" of  men's  "real  intents. "  Measure  for  Measure 
is  full  of  expressions  drawn  from  a  profoimd  experience 

15  of  these  casuistries,  and  that  ethical  interest  becomes 
predominant  in  it:  it  is  no  longer  Promos  and  Cassandra^ 
but  Measure  for  Measure,  its  new  name  expressly  suggest- 
ing the  subject  of  ^poetical  justice.  The  action  of  the  play, 
like  the  action  of  life  itself  for  the  keener  observer,  develops 

20  in  us  the  conception  of  this  poetical  justice,  and  the 
yearning  to  realize  it,  the  true  justice  of  which  Angelo 
knows  nothing,  because  it  lies  for  the  most  part  beyond 
the  limits  of  any  acknowledged  law.  The  idea  of  justice 
involves  the  idea  of  rights.     But  at  bottom  rights  are 

25  equivalent  to  that  which  really  is,  to  facts;  and  the  recogni- 
tion of  his  rights  therefore,  the  justice  he  requires  of  our 
hands,  or  our  thoughts,  is  the  recognition  of  that  which 
the  person,  in  his  inmost  nature^  really  is;  and  as  sym- 
pathy alone  can  discover  that  which  really  is  in  matters 

30  of  feeling  and  thought,  true  justice  is  in  its  essence  a  finer 
knowledge  through  love. 

"'Tis  very  pregnant: 
The  jewel  that  we  find  we  stoop  and  take  it. 
Because  we  see  it ;  but  what  we  do  not  see 
^^  We  tread  upon,  and  never  think  of  it." 


216  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

It  is  for  this  finer  justice,  a  justice  based  on  a  more  delicate 
appreciation  of  the  true  conditions  of  men  and  things, 
a  true  respect  of  persons  in  our  estimate  of  actions,  that 
the  people  in  Measure  for  Measure  cry  out  as  they  pass 
before  us;  and  as  the  poetry  of  this  play  is  full  of  the  5 
peculiarities  of  Shakespeare's  poetry,  so  in  its  ethics  it  is 
an  epitome  of  Shakespeare's  moral  judgments.  They 
are  the  moral  judgments  of  an  observer,  of  one  who  sits 
as  a  spectator,  and  knows  how  the  threads  in  the  design 
before  him  hold  together  under  the  surface:  they  are  10 
the  judgments  of  the  humorist  also,  who  follows  with  a 
half-amused  but  always  pitiful  sympathy,  the  various 
ways  of  human  disposition,  and  sees  less  distance  than 
ordinary  men  between  what  are  called  respectively  great 
and  little  things.  It  is  not  always  that  poetry  can  be  the  15 
exponent  of  morality;  but  it  is  this  aspect  of  morals  which 
it  represents  most  naturally,  for  this  true  justice  is  depend- 
ent on  just  those  finer  appreciations  which  poetry  culti- 
vates in  us  the  power  of  making,  those  peculiar  valuations 
of  action  and  its  effect  which  poetry  actually  requires.  20 

Suggestions:  Read  the  two  plays  in  connection  with  Pater's 
"appreciations"  of  them.  Analyze  the  plan  of  each  essay, — 
especially  that  of  Measure  for  Measure. 

Does  Pater,  in  these  essays,  carry  any  farther  his  idea  of 
"appreciation?"  Compare  the  "historical  estimate"  and  the 
"personal  estimate"  as  a  means  of  judging  "Love's  Labours 
Lost." 

Are  Pater's  sentences  generally  loose  or  generally  periodic? 
Do  they  impress  you  as  being  unpleasantly  long,  at  any  time? 
Name  the  two  most  striking  qualities  of  his  vocabulary. 

In  writing  your  own  theme,  follow  some  such  plan  as  this: 

(1)  General  matters  concerning  the  play,  its  sources,  type,  etc.; 

(2)  Leading  idea  or  implication  of  the  play;  (3)  Comments  on 
the  several  characters;  (4)  Final  impression  of  the  dramatic 
construction  and  of  the  style. 


EXPOSITION  217 

Imitate,  as  far   as  you  can,  Pater's  flexible    sentences,   and 
his   delicate,   precise,   and   varied   use   of  words. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS. 

Write  an  "appreciation"  of  one  of  the  following  plays: 
The  Merchant  of  Venice. 
A  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream. 
Macbeth. 

Much  Ado  About  Nothing. 
The  Rivals. 

She  Stoops  to  Conquer. 
Candida. 

An  Enemy  of  the  People. 
The  Servant  in  the  House. 
Everyman. . 


A  "MADONNA  AND  SAINTS,"  BY 
MANTEGNA 

John  La  Faroe* 

LET  us  go  back  to  an  earlier  date,  not  so  far  back 
in  years  as  in  spirit  and  in  the  development  of  the 
special  art  of  painting.     There  is  a  delightful  painting  by 
Mantegna,   owned   by   Mrs.    John   Lowell    Gardner,   of 
5  Boston,  which  offers  a  very  different  type  of  our  subject 
from  the  lordly  representations  of  Raphael  and  his  circle. 
It  is  more  like  the  Conversation  by  Bellini  given  before, 
but  it  has  that  strange  severity  that  never  leaves  the  ancient 
painter,  which  persists  in  this  pastoral  scene,  in  this  dream 
10  of  sweetness  and  of  light. 

By  the  riverside  in  the  foreground,  filling  almost  the 
entire  space,  sit  a  group  of  women  and  two  naked  children, 

♦From  One  Hundred  Masterpieces  of  Painting.      Used  by  permission 
of  Doubleday,  Page  &  Company. 


218  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

perhaps  fresh  from  the  bath,  the  Infant  Christ,  and  the 
infant  John.  They  are  Uke  a  family  party,  or  a  number 
of  friends  well  accustomed  to  each  other's  company. 
Here,  in  what  might  have  been  a  conventional  and  frigid 
arrangement,  the  painter's  sense  of  life  has  combined  5 
the  separate  characters,  probably  chosen  for  devotional 
reasons  (as  I  keep  explaining),  in  what  seems  an  unpre- 
meditated arrangement,  which  all  the  more  looks  as  if 
it  must  have  happened — as  having  been  taken  from  an 
actual  sight.  lo 

The  Madonna  sits  in  the  middle,  facing  us,  and  in  an 
abstracted  way  looks  toward  the  little  Christ,  who  stands 
between  her  knees,  His  bare  feet  protected  by  her  cloak, 
upon  which  He  stands.  His  foot  rests  upon  her  and 
forms  the  start  of  all  the  many  folds  which  run  through  15 
her  drapery,  and  determines  the  arrangement  of  the  dra- 
peries of  all  the  figures  to  the  right  of  the  Virgin. 

However  natural  the  picture  may  be,  it  is  a  learned 
composition,  and  a  beautiful  study  of  the  arrangement 
of  folds,  expressing  the  movement  of  the  body  and  the  20 
character  of  the  individual.  The  Madonna's  dull  blue 
mantle,  lined  with  black,  frames  her  head  in  dark  and 
makes  it  the  most  important.  All  the  folds  of  her  dress 
are  large  and  soft,  benign  and  gentle.  Saint  Anne,  her 
mother,  next  to  her,  draws  up  her  hand  to  close  her  cloak  25 
upon  her  bosom  in  a  manner  suggestive  of  feeling  and  also 
of  the  protection  necessary  to  age.  Her  gray  cloak  covers 
her  head  and  falls  in  many  folds  of  a  certain  severity, 
contrasting  with  the  more  gentle  fall  of  the  Madonna's 
dress  and  with  the  simpler  gown  of  Mary  Magdalen  30 
alongside,  whose  frock  is  merely  twice  girdled  and  is  all 
of  one  color.  Her  drapery  shows  her  form  in  a  simplicity 
of  attitude  which  the  face  above  carries  out.  She  and  all 
but  one  of  the  women  of  the  group  look  with  varieties  of 


EXPOSITION  219 

meaning  and  expression  at  the  Divine  Child.  The 
Magdalen's  hand  and  arm  rest  in  her  lap,  abstracted,  and 
she  holds  a  little  pyx  of  red  gold,  which  is  her  symbol. 
Near  her,  on  the  edge  of  the  picture,  sits  some  other  saint 
5  in  much  more  worldly  dress,  like  that  of  the  period,  with 
hair  in  curls  down  her  cheek  and  in  net  behind,  whose 
face  expresses  a  quiet  interest  in  the  Child  and  Mother, 
but  who  also  appears  to  talk  a  little  to  the  saint  in  the 
absolute  foreground. 

10  Tliis  one  is  reading,  perhaps  aloud,  for  her  lips  are 
open  and  a  slight  movement  of  the  face  seems  to  indicate 
something  more  than  the  silent  reading  to  one's  self.  In 
the  careful  folds,  dear  to  Mantegna,  her  dress,  in  many 
colors   and   complicated  fashion,   spreads  out  upon   the 

15  rock  on  which  she  sits.     Here  in  these  folds,  and  in  the 

whole  figure  of  the  saint,  one  sees  that  fondness  for  form 

and  its  strong  statement,  which  is  the  mark  of  Mantegna. 

Indeed,  from  the  Saint  Anne  a  statue  could  well  be  built. 

And  as  for  the  landscape  which  spreads  behind  the 

20  figures,  it  is  made  out,  in  its  flat  spaces  and  rising  ground, 
as  if  to  lead  the  spectator  to  a  wish  to  wander  into  a  land 
so  full  of  stories.  For  here,  not  far  off.  Saint  Christopher, 
carrying  the  Infant  Christ  on  his  shoulders,  crosses  the 
ford  indicated  by  piles  rising  from  the  water,  and  distant 

25  figures  wait  near  the  continuance  of  a  peaceful  road  on  a 
farther  bank. 

There  gallops  Saint  George  in  full  armor,  on  the  heavy 
horse  that  knights  rode  in  action.  He  is  about  to  strike 
with  his  lance  the  dragon  that  crouches  behind  rocks  upon 

30  a  little  green  sward,  where  lie  the  skulls  and  bones  of  his 
victims. 

Farther  on  runs  the  road,  up  the  hill  and  round  the 
enclosure,  a  peaceful  orchard  fronting  still  higher  ground, 
also  planted  with  trees,  wherein  is  laid  out  the  scheme  of  a 


220  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

great  garden  in  Italian  way:  and  further  back,  crowning 
the  hill,  a  mass  of  buildings,  with  arcades  and  pyramids 
and  an  aqueduct  and  a  classical  temple,  closed  in  by  the 
foot  of  a  fortress  and  outflanking  towers. 

On  either  side  of  the  river  rise  high  and  strange  rocks    5 
On  our  side  the  rocks  rise  suddenly,  closing  in  the  sense 
of  garden  that  belongs  to  the  name  of  the  Madonna  and  to 
the  idea  of  a  Sacred  Conversation. 

Up  in  a  great  rock,  that  towers  in  the  top  of  the  painting, 
is   a   cavern   of   two   openings.     In   one.   Saint   Jerome,   10 
long-bearded,  kneels  before  a  tall  crucifix,  and  bares  his 
bosom  to  strike  it  with  the  stone  of  repentance.     In  the 
other  cavern  his  friend,  the  lion,  watches  him  attentively. 

Higher  up  again,  on  a  platform,  near  another  opening 
of  cavern.  Saint  Francis  stands  in  excited  attitude  before  15 
the  winged  crucifix  of  legend,  the  vision  from  which  he 
obtained  the  wounds  of  his  Saviour. 

Some  way  nearer,  a  monk,  with  his  back  turned,  waits 
patiently,  without  seeing  the  miraculous  scene.  One  is 
reminded  of  that  other  lovely  Sacred  Conversation,  attribu-  20 
ted  to  Bellini,  where  outside  the  closed  garden  occur  far- 
away scenes  of  the  saints  of  the  desert,  emphasizing  the 
perpetuity  of  the  Church,  the  long  continuance  of  the 
saints  in  Heaven  with  us  of  to-day,  and  the  idea  that  all 
these  accidents  of  Time  and  Place  are  but  the  events  of  a  25 
moment  in  the  scale  of  Eternity. 

As  our  eyes  come  down  again  to  the  nearer  figures  we 
feel  all  the  more  the  presence  of  the  two  saints,  the  one 
seated,  the  other  kneeling  on  the  right  of  the  picture. 
The  one  nearer  to  the  Madonna  looks  pensively  at  the  30 
Infant  Christ,  having  interrupted  her  reading  and  waking 
up  from  her  dream!  In  front  of  her  moves  the  little  in- 
fant Baptist,  as  if  he  had  just  come  from  his  bath.  He 
offers  some  flowers  to  the  other  Child,  resting  his  hand  on 


EXPOSITION  221 

the  Virgin's  knee.  He  does  this  with  a  gentle  action  of 
suppHcation  and  an  upward  look  of  the  eyes,  which  the 
Divine  Child  meets  in  the  manner  of  a  young  lord  ac- 
customed to  worship. 

5  Quite  to  the  right,  the  kneeling  saint,  in.  a  costume  very 
much  of  the  period,  kneels  and  looks  down,  scarcely  seeing 
the  Infant  Saviour  to  whom  she  prays,  however,  with  hands 
pressed  one  against  the  other.  Those  hands  and  arms 
close  the  arrangement  on  that  side  of  the  picture,  and  we 

10  feel  that  there  is  nothing  more  even  outside  of  the  frame. 

Suggestions:  This  descriptive  criticism  of  a  picture  should 
prove  suggestive  because  of  its  simplicity.  Mr.  La  Farge  takes  up 
the  elements  of  the  picture,  one  by  one,  characterizing  and 
explaining  them.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  he  seems  to  be 
merely  describing,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  artistic  judgment  and 
"appreciation." 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Describe  any  famous  picture  that  you  know.  Choose,  pre- 
ferably, one  containing  a  group,  or  several  figures,  at  any  rate. 
The  following  are  suggested: 

Botticelli's  Spring,  » 

Raphael's  Sistine  Madonna. 
Watts'  The  Court  of  Death. 

"      Love  and  Life. 

'*      Love  and  Death. 
Burne-Jones'  Golden  Stairs. 

"        The  Mirror  of  Venus. 
Guercino's  Guardian  Angel. 


o 


NIOBE 

Percy  Bysshe  Shelley* 

F  all  that  remains  to  us  of   Greek  antiquity,   this 
figure  is  perhaps  the  most  consummate  person i- 
♦Remarks  on  some  of  the  Statues  in  the  Gallery  of  Florence. 


222  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

fication  of  loveliness,  with  regard  to  its  countenance, 
as  that  of  the  Venus  of  the  Tribune  is  with  regard  to  its 
entire  form  of  a  woman.  It  is  colossal :  the  size  adds  to  its 
value;  because  it  allows  the  spectator  the  choice  of  a  greater 
number  of  points  of  view,  and  affords  him  a  more  analy-  5 
tical  one,  in  which  to  catch  a  greater  number  of  the  in- 
finite modes  of  expression,  of  which  any  form  approaching 
ideal  beauty  is  necessarily  composed.  It  is  the  figure  of  a 
mother  in  the  act  of  sheltering,  from  some  divine  and 
inevitable  peril,  the  last,  we  may  imagine,  of  her  surviving  10 
children. 

The  little  creature,  terrified,  as  we  may  conceive,  at 
the  strange  destruction  of  all  its  kindred,  has  fled  to  its 
mother,  and  is  hiding  its  head  in  the  folds  of  her  robe, 
and  casting  back  one  arm,  as  in  a  passionate  appeal  for  15 
defense,  where  it  could  never  before  have  been  sought  in 
vain.  She  is  clothed  in  a  thin  tunic  of  delicate  woof; 
and  her  hair  is  fastened  on  her  head  into  a  knot,  probably 
by  that  mother  whose  care  will  never  fasten  it  again. 
Niobe  is  enveloped  in  profuse  drapery,  a  portion  of  which  20 
the  left  hand  has  gathered  up,  and  is  in  the  act  of  ex- 
tending it  over  the  child  in  the  instinct  of  shielding  her 
from  what  reason  knows  to  be  inevitable.  The  right 
hand  (as  the  restorer  has  properly  imagined),  is  drawing 
up  her  daughter  to  her;  and  with  that  instinctive  gesture  25 
and  by  its  gentle  pressure,  is  encouraging  the  child  to 
believe  that  it  can  give  security.  The  countenance  of 
Niobe  is  the  consummation  of  feminine  majesty  and  love- 
liness, beyond  which  the  imagination  scarcely  doubts  that 
it  can  conceive  anything.  30 

That  masterpiece  of  the  poetic  harmony  of  marble 
expresses  other  feelings.  There  is  embodied  a  sense  of 
the  inevitable  and  rapid  destiny  which  is  consummating 
around  her,  as  if  it  were  already  over.     It  seems  as  if 


EXPOSITION  223 

despair  and  beauty  had  combined  and  produced  nothing 
but  the  subhmity  of  grief.  As  the  motions  of  the  form 
expressed  the  instinctive  sense  of  the  possibiUty  of  pro- 
tecting the  child,  and  the  accustomed  and  affectionate 
5  assurance  that  she  would  find  an  asylum  within  her  arms, 
so  reason  and  imagination  speak  in  the  countenance  the 
certainty  that  no  mortal  defense  is  of  avail.  There  is 
no  terror  in  the  countenance,  only  grief — deep,  remedi- 
less grief.     There  is  no  anger;  of  what  avail  is  indignation 

10  against  what  is  known  to  be  omnipotent.^  There  is  no 
selfish  shrinking  from  personal  pain,  there  is  no  panic  at 
supernatural  agency,  there  is  no  adverting  to  herself  as 
herself;  the  calamity  is  mightier  than  to  leave  scope  for 
such  emotions. 

15  Everything  is  swallowed  up  in  sorrow;  she  is  all  tears; 
her  countenance,  in  assured  expectation  of  the  arrow 
piercing  its  last  victim  in  her  embrace,  is  fixed  on  her 
omnipotent  enemy.  The  pathetic  beauty  of  the  ex- 
pression of  her  tender,  and  inexhaustible,  and  unquencha- 

20  ble  despair,  is  beyond  the  effect  of  any  other  sculpture. 
As  soon  as  the  arrow  shall  pierce  her  last  tie  upon  earth, 
the  fable  that  she  was  turned  into  stone,  or  dissolved  into  a 
fountain  of  tears,  will  be  but  a  feeble  emblem  of  the  sadness 
of  hopelessness,  in  which  the  few  and  evil  years  of  her 

25  remaining  life,  we  feel,  must  flow  away. 

It  is  difficult  to  speak  of  the  beauty  of  the  countenance 
or  to  make  intelligible  in  words,  from  what  such  astonishing 
loveliness  results. 

The  head,  resting  somewhat  backward  upon  the  full 

30  and  flowing  contour  of  the  neck,  is  as  in  the  act  of  watching 
an  event  momently  to  arrive.  The  hair  is  delicately 
divided  on  the  forehead,  and  a  gentle  beauty  gleams 
from  the  broad  and  clear  brow  over  which  its  strands 
are  drawn.     The  face  is  of  an  oval  fullness,  and  the  fea- 


224  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

tures  conceived  with  the  daring  of  a  sense  of  power.  In 
this  respect  it  resembles  the  careless  majesty  which  Nature 
stamps  upon  the  rare  masterpieces  of  her  creation,  har- 
monizing them  as  it  were  from  the  harmony  of  the  spirit 
within  Yet  all  this  not  only  consists  with,  but  is  the  cause  5 
of  the  subtlest  delicacy  of  clear  and  tender  beauty — the 
expression  at  once  of  innocence  and  sublimity  of  soul — 
of  purity  and  strength — of  all  that  which  touches  the  most 
removed  and  divine  of  the  chords  that  make  music  in  our 
thoughts — of  that  which  shakes  with  astonishment  even  10 
the  most  superficial. 

Suggestions:     Does  this  criticism  follow  any  general  plan? 

Trace  the  sources  of  effectiveness  in  Shelley's  prose  style, 
(1)  as  to  sentence  construction,  (2)  as  to  the  kinds  and  the 
variety  of  words  employed. 

Characterize  the  mood  of  the  critic.  Is  it  realized  in  the  final 
impression  which  you  receive  of  the  criticism?  Is  this  crit- 
icism "appreciation,"  in  Pater's  sense  of  the  word? 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 
Write,  from  a  cast,  or  any  good  photograph,  a  criticism  of 
any   one   of   the   following   pieces   of  statuary. 
The  Marble  Faun.  Psyche. 

The  Venus  of  Milo  The  Wrestlers. 

Laocoon.  Pallas  Athena. 

The  Dying  Gaul.  The  Discobolus. 

The  Listening  Bacchus,  (Formerly  called  "Narcissus"). 
Macmonnies'   Bacchante. 


THE  TWO  RACES  OF  MEN 
Charles  Lamb 

THE  human  species,  according    to  the  best  theory  I 
can  form  of  it,  is  composed  of  two  distinct  races, 
the  men  who  borrow^  and  tlie  men  who  lend.     To  these 


EXPOSITION  225 

two'  original  diversities  may  be  reduced  all  those  im- 
pertinent classifications  of  Gothic  and  Celtic  tribes,  white 
men,  black  men,  red  men.  All  the  dwellers  upon  earth, 
"Parthians,  and  Medes,  and  Elamites,"  flock  hither, 
5  and  do  naturally  fall  in  with  one  or  other  of  these  primary 
distinctions.  The  infinite  superiority  of  the  former, 
which  I  chose  to  designate  as  the  great  race,  is  discernible 
in  their  figure,  port,  and  a  certain  instinctive  sovereignty. 
The    latter    are    born    degraded.     "He    shall    serve   his 

10  brethren."  There  is  something  in  the  air  of  one  of  this 
caste,  lean  and  suspicious;  contrasting  with  the  open, 
trusting,  generous  manners  of  the  other. 

Observe  who  have  been  the  greatest  borrowers  of  all 
ages — Alcibiades — Falstaff — Sir  Richard  Steele — our  late 

15  incomparable  Brinsley — what  a  family  likeness  in  all  four! 

What  a  careless,  even  deportment  hath  your  borrower! 

what  rosy  gills!  what  a  beautiful  reliance  on  Providence 

doth  he  manifest, — taking  no  more  thought  than  lilies! 

What   contempt  for  money, — accounting   it    (yours   and 

20  mine  especially)  no  better  than  dross!  What  a  liberal 
confounding  of  those  pedantic  distinctions  of  meum  and 
tuum!  or  rather,  what  a  noble  simplification  of  language 
(beyond  Tooke),  resolving  these  supposed  opposites 
into    one    clear,    intelligible    pronoun    adjective! — ^What 

25  near  approaches  doth  he  make  to  the  primitive  com- 
munity,— to  the  extent  of  one  half  of  the  principle  at 
least! 

He  is  the  true  taxer  who  "calleth  all  the  world  up  to  be 
taxed;"  and  the  distance  is  as  vast  between  him  and  one 

30  of  us,  as  subsisted  between  the  Augustan  Majesty  and  the 
poorest  obolary  Jew  that  paid  it  tribute-pittance  at 
Jerusalem! — His  exactions,  too,  have  such  a  cheerful, 
voluntary  air!  So  far  removed  from  your  sour  parochial 
or  state-gatherers,  those  ink-horn  varlets,  who  carry  their 


226  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

want  of  welcome  in  their  faces!  He  cometh  to  you 
with  a  smile,  and  troubleth  you  with  no  receipt;  con- 
fining himself  to  no  set  season.  Every  day  is  his  Can- 
dlemas, or  his  feast  of  Holy  Michael.  He  applieth  the 
lene  tormentum  of  a  pleasant  look  to  your  purse,  which  5 
to  that  gentle  warmth  expands  her  silken  leaves  as  natu- 
rally as  the  cloak  of  the  traveler,  for  which  sun  and  wind 
contended!  He  is  the  true  Propontic  which  never  ebbeth! 
The  sea  which  taketh  handsomely  at  each  man's  hand. 
In  vain  the  victim,  whom  he  delighteth  to  honor,  struggles  10 
with  destiny;  he  is  in  the  net.  Lend  therefore  cheerfully, 
O  man  ordained  to  lend,  that  thou  lose  not  in  the  end, 
with  thy  worldly  penny,  the  reversion  promised.  Combine 
not  preposterously  in  thine  own  person  the  penalties  of 
Lazarus  and  of  Dives! — but,  when  thou  seest  the  proper  15 
authority  coming,  meet  it  smilingly,  as  it  were  half-way. 
Come,  a  handsome  sacrifice!  See  how  light  he  makes  of 
it!     Strain  not  courtesies  with  a  noble  enemy. 

Reflections  like  the  foregoing  were  forced  upon  my  mind 
by  the  death  of  my  old  friend  Ralph  Bigod,  Esq.,  who  20 
parted  this  life  on  Wednesday  evening — dying,  as  he  had 
lived,  without  much  trouble.  He  boasted  himself  a 
descendant  from  mighty  ancestors  of  that  name,  who  here- 
tofore held  ducal  dignities  in  this  realm.  In  his  actions  and 
sentiments  he  belied  not  the  stock  to  which  he  pretended.  ^ 
Early  in  life  he  found  himself  invested  with  ample  revenues; 
which,  with  that  noble  disinterestedness  which  I  have 
noticed  as  inherent  in  men  of  the  great  racCy  he  took  almost 
immediate  measures  entirely  to  dissipate  and  bring  to 
nothing;  for  there  is  something  revolting  in  the  idea  of  a  30 
king  holding  a  private  purse;  and  the  thoughts  of  Bigod 
were  all  regal.  Thus  furnished,  by  the  very  act  of  dis- 
furnishment,  getting  ri<l  of  the  cumbersome  luggage  of 
riches,  more  apt  (as  one  sings) 


EXPOSITION  227 

"To  slacken  virtue,  and  abate  her  edge. 
Than  prompt  her  to  do  aught  may  merit  praise," 

he  set  forth,  Hke  some  Alexander,  upon  his  great  enter- 
prise "borrowing  and  to  borrow." 

5  In  his  periegesis,  or  triumphant  progress  throughout  this 
island,  it  has  been  calculated  that  he  laid  a  tithe  part  of 
the  inhabitants  under  contribution.  I  reject  this  estimate 
as  greatly  exaggerated: — but  having  had  the  honor  of 
accompanying  my  friend,  divers  times,  in  his  perambula- 

10  tions  about  this  vast  city,  I  own  I  was  greatly  struck  at  first 
with  the  prodigious  number  of  faces  we  met,  who  claimed 
a  sort  of  respectful  acquaintance  with  us.  He  was  one 
day  so  obliging  as  to  explain  the  phenomenon.  It  seems, 
these    were    his    tributaries;    feeders    of    his    exchequer; 

15  gentlemen,  his  good  friends  (as  he  was  pleased  to  express 
himself) ,  to  whom  he  had  occasionally  been  beholden  for  a 
loan.  Their  multitudes  did  no  way  disconcert  him.  He 
rather  took  a  pride  in  numbering  them ;  and,  with  Comus, 
seemed  pleased  to  be  "stocked  with  so  fair  a  herd." 

20  With  such  sources,  it  was  a  wonder  how  he  contrived 
to  keep  his  treasury  always  empty.  He  did  it  by  force  of 
an  aphorism,  which  he  had  often  in  his  mouth,  that  "  money 
kept  longer  than  three  days  stinks. "  So  he  made  use  of  it 
while  it  was  fresh.     A  good  part  he  drank  away  (for  he 

25  was  an  excellent  toss-pot),  some  he  gave  away,  the  rest 
he  threw  away,  literally  tossing  and  hurling  it  violently 
from  him — as  boys  do  burrs,  or  as  if  it  had  been  infectious, 
— into  ponds,  or  ditches,  or  deep  holes,  inscrutable  cavities 
of  the   earth; — or   he  would   bury   it    (where   he  would 

30  never  seek  it  again)  by  a  river's  side  under  some  bank, 
which  (he  would  facetiously  observe)  paid  no  inter- 
est— but  out  away  from  him  it  must  go  peremptorily,  as 
Hagar's  offspring  into  the  wilderness,  while  it  was  sweet. 
He  never  missed  it.     The  streams  were  perennial  which 


228  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

fed  his  fisc.  When  new  supphes  became  necessary,  the 
first  person  that  had  the  fehcity  to  fall  in  with  him,  friend 
or  stranger,  was  sure  to  contribute  to  the  deficiency.  For 
Bigod  had  an  undeniable  way  with  him.  He  had  a  cheer- 
ful, open  exterior,  a  quick  jovial  eye,  a  bald  forehead,  5 
just  touched  with  gray  (cana  fides) .  He  anticipated  no 
excuse,  and  found  none.  And,  waiving  for  a  while  my 
theory  as  to  the  great  race,  I  would  put  it  to  the  most  un- 
theorizing  reader,  who  may  at  times  have  disposable  coin 
In  his  pocket,  whether  it  is  not  more  repugnant  to  the  10 
kindliness  of  his  nature  to  refuse  such  a  one  as  I  am 
describing,  than  to  say  no  to  a  poor  petitionary  rogue 
(your  bastard  borrower),  who,  by  his  mumping  visnomy, 
tells  you  that  he  expects  nothing  better;  and,  therefore, 
whose  preconceived  notions  and  expectations  you  do  in  15 
reality  so  much  less  shock  in  the  refusal. 

When  I  think  of  this  man;  his  fiery  glow  of  heart;  his 
swell  of  feeling;  how  magnificent,  how  ideal  he  was;  how 
great  at  the  midnight  hour;  and  when  I  compare  with 
him  the  companions  with  whom  I  have  associated  since,  I  20 
grudge  the  saving  of  a  few  idle  ducats,  and  think  that  I 
am  fallen  into  the  society  of  lenders,  and  Utile  men. 

To  one  like  Elia,  whose  treasures  are  rather  cased  in 
leather  covers  than  closed  in  iron  coffers,  there  is  a  class 
of  alienators  more  formidable  than  that  which  I  have  25 
touched  upon;  I  mean  your  borroivers  of  books — those 
mutilators  of  collections,  spoilers  of  the  symmetry  of 
shelves,  and  creators  of  odd  volumes.  There  is  Comber- 
batch,  matchless  in  his  depredations! 

That  foul  gap  in  the  bottom  shelf  facing  you,  like  a  30 
great  eye-tooth  knocked  out  (you  are  now  with  me  in  my 
little  back  study  in  Bloomsbury,  reader),  with  the  huge 
Switzer-like  tomes  on  each  side  (like  the  Guildhall  giants, 
in  their  reformed  posture,  guardant  of  nothing)  once  held 


EXPOSITION  229 

the  tallest  of  my  folios,  Opera  Bonaventurce,  choice  and 
massy  divinity,  to  which  its  two  supporters  (school  divinity 
also,  but  of  a  lesser  caliber,  Bellarmine,  and  Holy  Thomas) , 
showed  but  as  dwarfs,  itself  an  Ascapart!  that  Comber- 
5  batch  abstracted  upon  the  faith  of  a  theory  he  holds,  which 
is  more  easy,  I  confess,  for  me  to  suffer  by  than  to  refute, 
namely,  that  "the  title  to  property  in  a  book  (my  Bona- 
venture,  for  instance)  is  in  exact  ratio  to  the  claimant's 
powers   of  understanding   and   appreciating  the  same." 

10  Should  he  go  on  acting  upon  this  theory,  which  of  our 
shelves  is  safe? 

The  slight  vacuum  in  the  left-hand  case,  two  shelves 
from  the  ceiling,  scarcely  distinguishable  but  by  the  quick 
eye  of  a  loser,  was  whilom  the  commodious  resting-place 

15  of  Browne  on  Urn  Burial  C.  will  hardly  allege  that  he 
knows  more  about  that  treatise  than  I  do,  who  introduced 
it  to  him,  and  was  indeed  the  first  (of  the  moderns)  to 
discover  its  beauties,  but  so  have  I  known  a  foolish  lover 
to  praise  his  mistress  in  the  presence  of  a  rival  more  quali- 

20  fied  to  carry  her  off  than  himself. — Just  below,  Dodsley's 
dramas  want  their  fourth  volume,  where  Vittoria  Corom- 
bona  is !  The  remainder  nine  are  as  distasteful  as  Priam's 
refuse  sons,  when  the  Fates  borrowed  Hector.  Here  stood 
the  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  in  sober  state. — There  loitered 

25  the  Complete  Angler;  quiet  as  in  life,  by  some  stream 
side. — In  yonder  nook,  John  Buncle,  a  widower- volume, 
with  "eyes  closed,"  mourns  his  ravished  mate. 

One  justice  I  must  do  my  friend,  that  if  he  sometimes, 
like  the  sea,  sweeps  away  a  treasure,  at  another  time,  sea- 

30  like,  he  throws  up  as  rich  an  equivalent  to  match  it.  I 
have  a  small  under-collection  of  this  nature  (my  friend's 
gatherings  in  his  various  calls),  picked  up,  he  has  for- 
gotten at  what  odd  places,  and  deposited  with  as  little 
memory  at  mine.     I  take  in  these  orphans,  the  twice- 


230  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

deserted.  These  proselytes  of  the  gate  are  welcome  as 
the  true  Hebrews.  There  they  stand  in  conjunction; 
natives,  and  naturalized.  The  latter  seem  as  little  dis- 
posed to  inquire  out  their  true  lineage  as  I  am.  I  charge 
no  warehouse-room  for  these  deodands,  not  shall  ever  put  5 
myself  to  the  ungentlemanly  trouble  of  advertising  a  sale 
of  them  to  pay  expenses. 

To  lose  a  volume  to  C.  carries  some  sense  and  meaning 
in  it.  You  are  sure  that  he  will  make  one  hearty  meal 
on  your  viands,  if  he  can  give  no  account  of  the  platter  10 
after  it.  But  what  moved  thee,  wayward,  spiteful  K., 
to  be  so  importunate  to  carry  off  with  thee,  in  spite  of 
tears  and  adjurations  to  thee  to  forbear,  the  Letters  of  that 
princely  woman,  the  thrice  noble  Margaret  Newcastle.'* — 
knowing  at  the  time,  and  knowing  that  I  knew  also,  thou  15 
most  assuredly  wouldst  never  turn  over  one  leaf  of  the 
illustrious  folio: — what  but  the  mere  spirit  of  contradic- 
tion, and  childish  love  of  getting  the  better  of  thy  friend  ? 
— Then,  worst  cut  of  all!  to  transport  it  with  thee  to  the 
Gallican  land —  20 

"Unworthy  land  to  harbor  such  a  sweetness, 
A  virtue  in  which  all  ennobling  thoughts  dwelt, 
Pure  thoughts,  kind  thoughts,  high  thoughts,  her  sex's  wonder!" 

— hadst  thou  not  thy  play-books,  and  books  of  jests  and 
fancies,  about  thee,  to  keep  thee  merry,  even  as  thou  25 
keepest  all  companies  with  thy  quips  and  mirthful  tales  ? 
Child  of  the  Green-Room,  it  was  unkindly  done  of  thee. 
Thy  wife,  too,  that  part  French,  better-part  English- 
woman! that  she  could  fix  upon  no  other  treatise  to  bear 
away,  in  kindly  token  of  remembering  us,  than  the  works  30 
of  Fulke  Greville,  Lord  Brook — of  which  no  Frenchman, 
nor  woman  of  France,  Italy  or  England,  was  ever  by  nature 
constituted  to  comprehend  a  tittle!  Was  there  not  Zim- 
merman on  Solitude? 


EXPOSITION  231 

Reader,  if  haply  thou  art  blessed  with  a  moderate  col- 
lection, be  shy  of  showing  it;  or  if  thy  heart  overfloweth  to 
lend  them,  lend  thy  books;  but  let  it  be  to  such  a  one  as 
S.  T.  C;  he  will  return  them  (generally  anticipating  the 

5  time  appointed)  with  usury;  enriched  with  annotations, 
tripling  their  value.  I  have  had  experience.  Many  are 
these  precious  MSS.  of  his  (in  matter  oftentimes,  and 
almost  in  quantity  not  unfrequently,  vying  with  the 
originals),  in  no  very  clerkly  hand;  legible  in  my  Daniel; 
10  in  old  Burton;  in  Sir  Thomas  Browne;  and  those  abstruser 
cogitations  of  the  Greville,  now,  alas!  wandering  in  Pagan 
lands.     I  counsel  thee,  shut  not  thy  heart,  nor  thy  library, 

•    against  S.  T.  C. 


OLD     CHINA 

Charles  Lamb 

I  HAVE  an  almost  feminine  partiality  for  old  china. 
When  I  go  to  see  any  great  house,  I  inquire  for  the 
china-closet,  and  next  for  the  picture-gallery.  I  cannot 
defend  the  order  of  preference,  but  by  saying  that  we  have 
all  some  taste  or  other,  of  too  ancient  a  date  to  admit  of 
our  remembering  distinctly  that  it  was  an  acquired  one. 

20  T  can  call  to  mind  the  first  play,  and  the  first  exhibition, 
that  I  was  taken  to;  but  I  am  not  conscious  of  a  time 
when  china  jars  and  saucers  were  introduced  into  my 
imagination. 

I  had  no  repugnance  then — ^why  should  I  now  have  ? — 

25  to  those  little,  lawless,  azure-tinctured  grotesques,  that, 
under  the  notion  of  men  and  women,  float  about,  uncir- 
cumscribed  by  any  element,  in  that  world  before  perspec- 
tive— a  china  tea-cup. 


232  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

I  like  to  see  my  old  friends,  whom  distance  cannot 
diminish,  figuring  up  in  the  air  (so  they  appear  to  our 
optics),  yet  on  terra firma  still — for  so  we  must  in  courtesy 
interpret  that  speck  of  deeper  blue,  which  the  decorous 
artist,  to  prevent  absurdity,  had  made  to  spring  up  be-  5 
neath  their  sandals. 

I  love  the  men  with  women's  faces,  and  women,  if  pos- 
sible, with  still  more  womanish  expressions. 

Here  is  a  young  and  courtly  Mandarin,  handing  tea  to 
a  lady  from  a  salver — two  miles  off.  See  how  distance  10 
seems  to  set  off  respect!  And  here  the  same  lady,  or 
another — for  likeness  is  identity  on  tea-cups — is  stepping 
into  a  little  fairy  boat,  moored  on  the  hither  side  of  this 
calm  garden  river,  with  a  dainty  mincing  foot,  which  in 
a  right  angle  of  incidence  (as  angles  go  in  our  world)  must  15 
infallibly  land  her  in  the  midst  of  a  flowery  mead — a 
furlong  off  on  the  other  side  of  the  same  strange  stream ! 

Further  on — if  far  or  near  can  be  predicated  of  their 
world — see  horses,  trees,  pagodas,  dancing  the  hays. 

Here — a  cow  and  rabbit  couchant,  and  co-extensive — so  20 
objects  show,  seen  through  the  lucid  atmosphere  of  fine 
Cathay. 

I  was  pointing  out  to  my  cousin  last  evening,  over  our 
Hyson  (which  we  are  old-fashioned  enough  to  drink  un- 
mixed still  of  an  afternoon) ,  some  of  these  speciosa  miracula  25 
upon  a  set  of  extraordinary  old  blue  china  (a  recent 
purchase)  which  we  were  now  for  the  first  time  using; 
and  could  not  help  remarking,  how  favorable  circum- 
stances had  been  to  us  of  late  years,  that  we  could  afford 
to  please  the  eye  sometimes  with  trifles  of  this  sort — when  30 
a  passing  sentiment  seemed  to  overshade  the  brows  of  my 
companion.  I  am  quick  at  detecting  these  summer 
clouds  in  Bridget. 

"I  wish  the  good  old  times  would  come  again,"  she 


EXPOSITION  233 

said,  "when  we  were  not  quite  so  rich.  I  do  not  mean 
that  I  want  to  be  poor;  but  there  was  a  middle  state," — 
so  she  was  pleased  to  ramble  on — "in  which  I  am  sure 
we  were  a  great  deal  happier.  A  purchase  is  but  a 
5  purchase,  now  that  you  have  money  enough  and  to  spare. 
Formerly  it  used  to  be  a  triumph.  When  we  coveted  a 
cheap  luxury  (and,  oh!  how  much  ado  I  had  to  get  you 
to  consent  in  those  times !)  we  were  used  to  have  a  debate 
two  or  three  days  before,  and  to  weigh  the /or  and  againsU 

10  and  think  what  we  might  spare  it  out  of,  and  what  saving 
we  could  hit  upon,  that  should  be  an  equivalent.  A 
thing  was  worth  buying  then,  when  we  felt  the  money  that 
we  paid  for  it. 

"Do  you  remember  the  brown  suit,  which  you  made  to 

15  hang  upon  you,  till  your  friends  cried  shame  upon  you,  it 
grew  so  threadbare — and  all  because  of  that  folio  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher,  which  you  dragged  home  late  at  night  from 
Barker's  in  Covent-garden  ?  Do  you  remember  how  we 
eyed  it  for  weeks  before  we  could  make  up  our  minds  to 

20  the  purchase,  and  had  not  come  to  a  determination  till 
it  was  near  ten  o'clock  of  the  Saturday  night,  when  you  set 
off  from  Islington,  fearing  you  should  be  too  late — and 
when  the  old  bookseller  with  some  grumbling  opened  his 
shop,   and   by  the  twinkling  taper    (for  he  was   setting 

25  bedward)  lighted  out  the  relic  from  his  dusty  treasures — 

•  and  when  you  lugged  it  home,  wishing  it  were  twice  as 

cumbersome — and  when  you  presented  it  to  me — and  when 

we  were  exploring  the  perfectness  of  it  {collating  you  called 

it) — and  while  I  was  repairing  some  of  the  loose  leaves 

30  with  paste,  which  your  impatience  would  not  suffer  to  be 
left  till  daybreak — was  there  no  pleasure  in  being  a  poor 
man.^  or  can  those  neat  black  clothes  which  you  wear 
now,  and  are  so  careful  to  keep  brushed,  since  we  have  be- 
come rich  and  finical,  give  you  half  the  honest  vanity  with 


234  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

which  you  flaunted  it  about  in  that  overworn  suit — ^your 
old  corbeau — for  four  or  ^ve  weeks  longer  than  you  should 
have  done,  to  pacify  your  conscience  for  the  mighty  sum 
of  fifteen — or  sixteen  shillings  was  it? — a  great  affair  we 
thought  it  then — which  you  had  lavished  on  the  old  5 
folio.  Now  you  can  afford  to  buy  any  book  that  pleases 
you,  but  I  do  not  see  that  you  ever  bring  me  home  any 
nice  old  purchases  now. 

"When  you  came  home  with  twent}^ apologies  for  laying 
out  a  less  number  of  shillings  upon  that  print  after  Lionardo  10 
which  we  christened  the  *  Lady  Blanch ;'  when  you  looked 
at  the  purchase,  and  thought  of  the  money — and  thought 
of  the  money,  and  looked  again  at  the  picture — was  there 
no  pleasure  in  being  a  poor  man  ?  Now,  you  have  nothing 
to  do  but  to  walk  into  Colnaghi's,  and  buy  a  wilderness  of  15 
Lionardos.     Yet  do  you  ? 

"Then,  do  you  remember  our  pleasant  walks  to  Enfield, 
and  Potter's  bar,  and  Waltham,  when  we  had  a  holiday — 
holidays  and  all  other  fun  are  gone  now  we  are  rich — and 
the  little  handbasket  in  which  I  used  to  deposit  our  day's  20 
fare  of  savory  cold  lamb  and  salad — and  how  you  would 
pry  about  at  noon-tide  for  some  decent  house,  where  we 
might  go  in  and  produce  our  store — only  paying  for  the  ale 
that  you  must  call  for — and  speculate  upon  the  looks  of 
the  landlady,  and  whether  she  was  likely  to  allow  us  a  25 
tablecloth — and  wish  for  such  another  honest  hostess  as  . 
Izaak  Walton  has  described  many  a  one  on  the  pleasant 
banks  of  the  lica,  when  he  went  a  fishing — and  sometimes 
they  would  prove  obliging  enough,  and  sometimes  they 
would  look  grudgingly  upon  us — but  we  had  cheerful  looks  30 
still  for  one  another,  and  would  eat  our  plain  food  savorily, 
scarcely  grudging  Piscator  his  Trout  Hall?     Now,  when 
we  go  out  a  day's  pleasuring,  which  is  seldom,  moreover, 
W3  ride  part  of  the  way,  and  go  into  a  fine,  inn,  and  order 


EXPOSITION  235 

the  best  of  dinners,  never  debating  the  expense,  which, 
after  all,  never  has  half  the  relish  of  those  chance  country 
snaps,  when  we  were  at  the  mercy  of  uncertain  usage,  and 
a  precarious  welcome. 
5  **You  are  too  proud  to  see  a  play  anywhere  now  but  in 
the  pit.  Do  you  remember  where  it  was  we  used  to  sit, 
when  we  saw  the  Battle  of  Hexham,  and  the  Surrender  of 
Calais,  and  Bannister  and  Mrs.  Bland  in  the  Children  in 
the  Wood — when  we  squeezed  out  our  shilling  apiece  to  sit 

10  three  or  four  times  in  a  season  in  the  one-shilling  gallery — 
where  you  felt  all  the  time  that  you  ought  not  to  have 
brought  me — and  more  strongly  I  felt  obligation  to  you 
for  having  brought  me — and  the  pleasure  was  the  better 
for  a  little  shame — and  when  the  curtain  drew  up,  what 

15  cared  we  for  our  place  in  the  house,  or  what  mattered  it 
where  we  were  sitting,  when  our  thoughts  were  with 
Rosalind  in  Arden,  or  with  Viola  at  the  Court  of  Illyria  ? 
You  used 'to  say  that  the  gallery  was  the  best  place  of 
all  for  enjoying  a  play  socially ;    that  the  relish  of  such 

20  exhibitions  must  be  in  proportion  to  the  infrequency  [of 
going;  that  the  company  we  met  there,  not  being  in 
general  readers  of  plays,  were  obliged  to  attend  the  more, 
and  did  attend,  to  what  was  going  on  on  the  stage, 
because  a  word  lost  would  have  been  a  chasm  which  it 

25  was  impossible  for  them  to  fill  up.  With  such  reflections 
we  consoled  our  pride  then,  and  I  appeal  to  you  whether, 
as  a  woman,  I  met  generally  with  less  attention  and  ac- 
commodation than  I  have  done  since  in  more  expensive 
situations  in  the  house  ?     The  getting  in,  indeed,  and  the 

30  crowding  up  those  inconvenient  staircases,  was  bad  enough, 
— but  there  was  still  a  law  of  civility  to  woman  recognized 
to  quite  as  great  an  extent  as  we  ever  found  in  the  other 
passages — and  how  a  little  difficulty  overcome  heightened 
the  snug  seat,  and  the  play,  afterward !     Now  we  can  only 


236  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

pay  our  money,  and  walk  in.  You  cannot  see,  you  say, 
in  the  galleries  now.  I  am  sure  we  saw,  and  heard  too, 
well  enough  then — but  sight,  and  all,  I  think,  is  gone  with 
our  poverty. 

"There  was  pleasure  in  eating  strawberries,  before  they  5 
became  quite  common — in  the  first  dish  of  peas,  while  they 
were  yet  dear — to  have  them  for  a  nice  supper,  a  treat. 
What  treat  can  we  have  now.^     If  we  were  to  treat  our- 
selves now — that  is,  to  have  dainties  a  little  above  our 
means,  it  would  be  selfish  and  wicked.     It  is  the  very  10 
little  more  that  we  allow  ourselves  beyond  what  the  actual 
poor  can  get  at,  that  makes  what  I  call  a  treat — when 
two  people  living  together,  as  we  have  done,  now  and  then 
indulge  themselves  in  a  cheap  luxury,  which  both  like; 
while  each  apologizes,  and  is  willing  to  take  both  halves   15 
of  the  blame  to  his  single  share.     I  see  no  harm  in  people 
making  much  of  themselves  in  that  sense  of  the  word. 
It  may  give  them  a  hint  how  to  make  much  of  ot'hers.     But 
now — what  I  mean  by  the  word — we  never  do  make  much 
of  ourselves.     None  but  the  poor  can  do  it.     I  do  not  20 
mean  the  veriest  poor  of  all,  but  persons  as  we  were,  just 
above  poverty. 

"I  know  what  you  were  going  to  say,  that  it  is  mighty 
pleasant  at  the  end  of  the  year  to  make  all  rrieet, — and 
much  ado  we  used  to  have  every  Thirty-first  Night  of  25 
December  to  account  for  our  exceedings — many  a  long 
face  did  you  make  over  your  puzzled  accounts,  and  in 
contriving  to  make  it  out  how  we  had  spent  so  much — or 
that  we  had  not  spent  so  much — or  that  it  was  impossible 
we  should  spend  so  much  next  year — and  still  we  found  30 
our  slender  capital  decreasing — but  then,  betwixt  ways, 
and  projects,  and  compromises  of  one  sort  or  another 
and  talk  of  curtailing  this  charge,  and  doing  without  that 
for  the  future — and   the  hope  that  youth  brings,   and 


EXPOSITION  237 

laughing  spirits  (in  which  you  were  never  poor  till  now) ,  we 
pocketed  up  our  loss,  and  in  conclusion,  with  'lusty 
brimmers '  (as  you  used  to  quote  it  out  of  hearty,  cheerful 
5  Mr.  Cotton,  as  you  called  him),  we  used  to  welcome  in 
the  'coming  guest.'  Now  we  have  no  reckoning  at  all  at 
the  end  of  the  old  year;  no  flattering  promises  about  the 
new  year  doing  better  for  us. " 

Bridget  is  so  sparing  of  her  speech,  on  most  occasions, 

10  that  when  she  gets  into  a  rhetorical  vein,  I  am  careful 
how  I  interrupt  it.  I  could  not  help,  however,  smiling 
at  the  phantom  of  wealth  which  her  dear  imagination 

had  conjured  up  out  of  a  clear  income  of  poor hundred 

pounds  a  year.     "It  is  true  we  were  happier  when  we  were 

15  poorer,  but  we  were  also  younger,  my  cousin.  I  am  afraid 
we  must  put  up  with  the  exces.%  for  if  we  were  to  shake  the 
superflux  into  the  sea,  we  should  not  much  mend  ourselves. 
That  we  had  much  to  struggle  with,  as  we  grew  up  together, 
we  have  reason  to  be  most  thankful.     It  strengthened 

20  and  knit  our  compact  closer.  We  could  never  have  been 
what  we  have  been  to  each  other,  if  we  had  always  had  the 
sufficiency  which  you  now  complain  of.  The  resisting 
power,  those  natural  dilations  of  the  youthful  spirit,  which 
circumstances  can  not  straiten — with  us  are  long  since 

25  passed  away.  Competence  to  age  is  supplementary 
youth,  a  sorry  supplement  indeed,  but  I  fear  the  best  that 
is  to  be  had.  We  must  ride  where  we  formerly  walked: 
live  better  and  lie  softer — and  shall  be  wise  to  do  so — 
than  we  had  means  to  do  in  those  good  old  days  you  speak 

30  of.  Yet  could  those  days  return,  could  you  and  I  once 
more  walk  our  thirty  miles  a  day,  could  Bannister  and  Mrs. 
Bland  again  be  young,  and  you  and  I  be  young  to  see 
them,  could  the  good  old  one  shilling  gallery  days  return — 
they  are  dreams,  my  cousin,  now,  but  could  you  and  I 
at  this  moment,  instead  of  this  quiet  argument,  by  our 


238  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

well-carpeted  fireside,  sitting  on  this  luxurious  sofa — be 
once  more  struggling  up  those  inconvenient  staircases, 
pushed  about  and  squeezed,  and  elbowed  by  the  poorest 
rabble  of  poor  gallery  scramblers — could  I  once  more  hear  5 
those  anxious  shrieks  of  yours,  and  the  delicious  Thank 
God,  we  are  safe,  which  always  followed,  when  the  topmost 
stair,  conquered,  let  in  the  first  light  of  the  whole  cheerful 
theatre  down  beneath  us — I  know  not  the  fathom  line 
that  ever  touched  a  descent  so  deep  as  I  would  be  willing  10 
to  bury  more  wealth  in  than  Croesus  had,  or  the  great 

Jew  R is  supposed  to  have,  to  purchase  it.     And  now 

do  just  look  at  that  merry  little  Chinese  waiter  holding  an 
umbrella,  big  enough  for  a  bed-tester,  over  the  head  of 
that  pretty  insipid  half-Madonna-ish  chit  of  a  lady  in   15 
that  very  blue  summer-house. " 


Suggestions:  What  of  the  length  of  Lamb's  sentences  ?  Are 
they  usually  loose  or  not?  What  effect  is  gained  by  the  con- 
stantly recurring  exclamatory  sentences?  What,  by  the  many 
allusions?     Name  three  peculiar  qualities  of  Lamb's  vocabulary. 

It  may  be  noticed  that  The  Two  Races  of  Men  begins  with  a 
general  explanation,  then  narrows  to  a  particular  instance.  Try 
to  follow  this  general  order  in  your  own  theme.  Use  some  of 
Lamb's  words,  if  you  can. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Two  Races  of  Students.       Rooms  that  I  Have  Loved. 
On  Being  a  Grind.  On  the  Decay  of  Text-books. 

Red  Ink.  Afternoon  Teas. 

My  First  Acquaintance  with  Caesar. 
Of  Persons  One  Would  Wish  to  Have  Been. 
On  Going  Home  at  Christmas. 
On  College  Actors  and  Acting. 


EXPOSITION  239 

ON  THE  ENJOYMENT  OF  UNPLEASANT 
PLACES* 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson 

IT  is  a  difficult  matter  to  make  the  most  of  any  given 
place,  and  we  have  much  in  our  own  power.  Things 
looked  at  patiently  from  one  side  after  another  generally 
end  by  showing  a  side  that  is  beautiful.     A  few  months 

5  ago  some  words  were  said  in  the  Portfolio  as  to  an  "  austere 
regimen  in  scenery;''  and  such  a  discipline  was  then  re- 
commended as  "healthful  and  strengthening  to  the  taste." 
That  is  the  text,  so  to  speak,  of  the  present  essay.  This 
discipline  in   scenery,   it  must  be  understood,   is  some- 

10  thing  more  than  a  mere  walk  before  breakfast  to  whet 
the  appetite.  For  when  we  are  put  down  in  some  un- 
sightly neighborhood,  and  especially  if  we  have  come  to  be 
more  or  less  dependent  on  what  we  see,  we  must  set  our- 
selves to  hunt  out  beautiful  things  with  all  the  ardor  and 

15  patience  of  a  botanist  after  a  rare  plant.  Day  by  day  we 
perfect  ourselves  in  the  art  of  seeing  nature  more  favorably. 
We  learn  to  live  with  her,  as  people  learn  to  live  with 
fretful  or  violent  spouses:  to  dwell  lovingly  on  what 
is  good,  and  shut  our  eyes  against  all  that  is  bleak  or 

20  inharmonious.  We  learn,  also,  to  come  to  each  place  in 
the  right  spirit.  The  traveler,  as  Brantome  quaintly  tells 
us,  ''fait  des  discours  en  soi  pour  se  soutenir  en  chemin;" 
and  into  these  discourses  he  weaves  something  out  of  all 
that  he  sees  and  suffers  by  the  way;  they  take  their  tone 

25  greatly  from  the  varying  character  of  the  scene;  a  sharp 

ascent  brings  different  thoughts  from  a  level  road;  and  the 

man's  fancies  grow  lighter  as  he  comes  out  of  the  wood 

into  a  clearing.     Nor  does  the  scenery  any  more  affect 

*  First  published  in  The  Portfolio,  November,  1874. 


240  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

the  thoughts  than  the  thoughts  affect  the  scenery.  We 
see  places  through  our  humors  as  through  differently 
colored  glasses.  We  are  ourselves  a  term  in  the  equation, 
a  note  of  the  chord,  and  make  discord  of  harmony  almost 
at  will.  There  is  no  fear  for  the  result,  if  we  can  but  sur-  5 
render  ourselves  sufficiently  to  the  country  that  surrounds 
and  follows  us,  so  that  we  are  ever  thinking  suitable 
thoughts  or  telling  ourselves  some  suitable  sort  of  story  as 
we  go.  We  become  thus,  in  some  sense,  a  center  of  beauty; 
we  are  provocative  of  beauty,  much  as  a  gentle  and  sincere  10 
character  is  provocative  of  sincerity  and  gentleness  in 
others.  And  even  where  there  is  no  harmony  to  be  elicited 
by  the  quickest  and  most  obedient  of  spirits,  we  may  still 
embellish  a  place  with  some  attraction  of  romance.  We 
may  learn  to  go  far  afield  for  associations,  and  handle  15 
them  lightly  when  we  have  found  them.  Sometimes 
an  old  print  comes  to  our  aid;  I  have  seen  many  a  spot 
lit  up  at  once  with  picturesque  imaginations,  by  a  remi- 
niscence of  Callot,  or  Sadeler,  or  Paul  Brill.  Dick  Turpin 
has  been  my  lay  figure  for  many  an  English  lane.  And  20 
I  suppose  the  Trossachs  would  hardly  be  the  Trossachs 
for  most  tourists  if  a  man  of  admirable  romantic  instinct 
had  not  peopled  it  for  them  with  harmonious  figures, 
and  brought  thern  thither  their  minds  rightly  prepared  for 
the  impression.  There  is  half  the  battle  in  this  preparation.  <25 
For  instance :  I  have  rarely  been  able  to  visit,  in  the  proper 
spirit,  the  wild  and  inhospitable  places  of  our  own  High- 
lands. I  am  happier  where  it  is  tame  and  fertile,  and  not 
readily  pleased  without  trees.  I  understand  that  there 
are  some  phases  of  mental  trouble  that  harmonize  well  3j 
with  such  surroundings,  and  that  some  persons,  by  the 
dispensing  power  of  the  imagination,  can  go  back  several 
centuries  in  spirit,  and  put  themselves  into  sympathy 
with  the  hunted,  houseless,  unsociable  wav  of  life  that 


EXPOSITION  241 

was  in  its  place  upon  these  savage  hills.  Now,  when  I 
am  sad,  I  like  nature  to  charm  me  out  of  my  sadness, 
like  David  before  Saul;  and  the  thought  of  these  past  ages 
strikes  nothing  in  me  but  an  unpleasant  pity;  so  that  I 
5  can  never  hit  on  the  right  humor  for  this  sort  of  landscape, 
and  lose  much  pleasure  in  consequence.  Still,  even  here, 
if  I  were  only  let  alone,  and  time  enough  were  given,  I 
should  have  all  manner  of  pleasure,  and  take  many  clear 
and  beautiful  images  away  with  me  when  I  left.     When  we 

10  cannot  think  ourselves  into  sympathy  with  the  great 
features  of  a  country,  we  learn  to  ignore  them,  and  put 
our  head  among  the  grass  for  flowers,  or  pore,  for  long 
times  together,  over  the  changeful  current  of  a  stream. 
We  come  down  to  the  sermon  in  stones,  when  we  are  shut 

15  out  from  any  poem  in  the  spread  landscape.  We  begin 
to  peep  and  botanize,  we  take  an  interest  in  birds  and 
insects,  we  find  many  things  beautiful  in  miniature.  The 
reader  will  recollect  the  little  summer  scene  in  Wuthering 
Heights — the  one  warm  scene,  perhaps,  in  all  that  power- 

20  ful,  miserable  novel — and  the  great  feature  that  is  made 
therein  by  grasses  and  flowers  and  a  little  sunshine:  this 
is  in  the  spirit  of  which  I  now  speak.  And,  lastly,  we 
can  go  indoors;  interiors  are  sometimes  as  beautiful, 
often  more  picturesque,  than  the  shows  of  the  open  air, 

25  and  they  have  that  quality  of  shelter  of  which  I  shall 
presently  have  more  to  say. 

With  all  this  in  mind,  I  have  often  been  tempted  to  put 
forth  the  paradox  that  any  place  is  good  enough  to  live  a 
life  in,  while  it  is  only  in  a  few,  and  those  highly  favored, 

30  that  we  can  pass  a  few  hours  agreeably.  For,  if  we  only 
stay  long  enough,  we  become  at  home  in  the  neighborhood. 
Reminiscences  spring  up,  like  flowers,  about  uninteresting 
corners.  We  forget  to  some  degree  the  superior  loveliness 
of  other  places,  and  fall  into  a  tolerant  and  sympathetic 


242  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

spirit  which  is  its  own  reward  and  justification.  Looking 
back  the  other  day  on  some  recollections  of  my  own,  I  was 
astonished  to  find  how  much  I  owed  to  such  a  residence; 
six  weeks  in  one  unpleasant  country-side  had  done  more, 
it  seemed,  to  quicken  and  educate  my  sensibilities  than  5 
.many  years  in  places  that  jumped  more  nearly  with  my 
inclination. 

The  country  to  which  I  refer  was  a  level  and  treeless 
plateau,  over  which  the  winds  cut  like  a  whip.  For  miles 
on  miles  it  was  the  same.  A  river,  indeed,  fell  into  the  sea  lo 
near  the  town  where  I  resided;  but  the  valley  of  the  river 
was  shallow  and  bald,  for  as  far  up  as  ever  I  had  the  heart 
to  follow  it.  There  were  roads,  certainly,  but  roads  that 
had  no  beauty  or  interest;  for,  as  there  was  no  timber, 
and  but  little  irregularity  of  surface,  you  saw  your  whole  15 
walk  exposed  to  you  from  the  beginning :  there  was  nothing 
left  to  fancy,  nothing  to  expect,  nothing  to  see  by  the  way- 
side, save  here  and  there  an  unhomely-looking  homestead, 
and  here  and  there  a  solitary,  spectacled  stone-breaker; 
and  you  w^ere  only  accompanied,  as  you  went  doggedly  20 
forward  by  the  gaunt  telegraph-posts  and  the  hum  of  the 
resonant  wires  in  the  keen  sea-wind.  To  one  who  has 
learned  to  know  their  song  in  warm  pleasant  places  by 
the  Mediterranean,  it  seemed  to  taunt  the  country,  and 
make  it  still  bleaker  by  suggested  contrast.  Even  the  25 
waste  places  by  the  side  of  the  road  were  not,  as  Haw- 
thorne liked  to  put  it,  "taken  back  to  Nature"  by  any 
decent  covering  of  vegetation.  Wherever  the  land  had 
the  chance,  it  seemed  to  lie  fallow.  There  is  a  certain 
tawny  nudity  of  the  South,  bare  sunburnt  plains,  colored  30 
like  a  lion,  and  hills  clothed  only  in  the  blue  transparent 
air;  but  this  was  of  another  description — this  was  the 
nakedness  of  tiie  North;  the  earth  seemed  to  know  that  it 
was  naked,  and  was  ashamed  and  cold. 


EXPOSITION  243 

It  seemed  to  be  always  blowing  on  that  coast.  In- 
deed, this  had  passed  into  the  speech  of  the  inhabitants, 
and  they  saluted  each  other  when  they  met  with  "Breezy, 
breezy,"  instead  of  the  customary  "Fine  day"  of  farther 
5  south.  These  continual  winds  were  not  like  the  harvest 
breeze,  that  just  keeps  an  equable  pressure  against  your 
face  as  you  walk,  and  serves  to  set  all  the  trees  talking 
over  your  head,  or  bring  round  you  the  smell  of  the  wet 
surface  of  the  country  after  a  shower.     They  were  of  the 

10  bitter,  hard,  persistent  sort,  that  interferes  with  sight  and 
respiration,  and  makes  the  eyes  sore.  Even  such  winds  as 
these  have  their  own  merit  in  proper  time  and  place.  It 
is  pleasant  to  see  them  brandish  great  masses  of  shadow. 
And  what  a  power  they  have  over  the  color  of  the  world ! 

15  How  they  ruffle  the  solid  woodlands  in  their  passage,  and 
make  them  shudder  and  whiten  like  a  single  willow! 
There  is  nothing  more  vertiginous  than  a  wind  like  this 
among  the  woods,  with  all  its  sights  and  noises;  and  the 
effect  gets  between  some  painters  and  their  sober  eyesight, 

20  so  that,  even  when  the  rest  of  their  picture  is  calm,  the 
foliage  is  colored  like  foliage  in  a  gale.  There  was 
nothing,  however,  of  this  sort  to  be  noticed  in  a  country 
where  there  were  no  trees  and  hardly  any  shadows,  save 
the  passive  shadows  and  clouds  or  those  of  rigid  houses 

25  and  walls.  But  the  wind  was  nevertheless  an  occasion 
of  pleasure;  for  nowhere  could  you  taste  more  fully  the 
pleasure  of  a  sudden  lull,  or  a  place  of  opportune  shelter. 
The  reader  knows  what  I  mean;  he  must  remember  how, 
when  he  has  sat  himself  down  behind  a  dyke  on  a  hill- 

30  side,  he  delighted  to  hear  the  wind  hiss  vainly  through 
the  crannies  at  his  back;  how  his  body  tingled  all  over 
with  warmth,  and  it  began  to  dawn  upon  him,  with  a 
sort  of  slow  surprise,  that  the  country  was  beautiful,  the 
heather  purple,  and  the  far-away  hills  all  marbled  with 


«44  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

sun  and  shadow.  Wordsworth,  in  a  beautiful  passage  of 
the  Prelude,  has  used  this  as  a  figure  for  the  feeUng 
struck  in  us  by  the  quiet  by-streets  of  London  after  the 
uproar  of  the  great  throughf  ares ;  and  the  comparison  may 
be  turned  the  other  way  with  as  good  effect:  5 

"Meanwhile  the  roar  continues,  till  at  length, 
Escaped  as  from  an  enemy  we  turn. 
Abruptly  into  some  sequester'd   nook. 
Still  as  a  shelter'd  place  when  winds  blow  loud!" 

I  remember  meeting  a  man  once,  in  a  train,  who  told   lo 
me  of  what  must  have  been  quite  the  most  perfect  instance 
of  this  pleasure  of  escape.     He  had  gone  up,  one  sunny, 
windy  morning,  to  the  top  of  a  great  cathedral  somewhere 
abroad;  I  think  it  was  Cologne  Cathedral,  the  great  un- 
finished marvel  by  the  Rhine;  and  after  a  long  while  in   15 
dark  stairways,  he  issued  at  last  into  the  sunshine,  on  a 
platform  high  above  the  town.     At  that  elevation  it  was 
quite  still  and  warm;  the  gale  was  only  in  the  lower  strata 
of  the  air,  and  he  had  forgotten  it  in  the  quiet  interior 
of  the  church  and  during  his  long  ascent;  and  so  you  may  20 
judge  of  his  surprise  when,  resting  his  arms  on  the  sunlit 
balustrade  and  looking  over  into  the  Place  far  below  him, 
he  saw  the  good  people  holding  on  their  hats  and  leaning 
hard  against  the  wind  as  they  walked.     There  is  something, 
to  my  fancy,  quite  perfect  in  this  little  experience  of  my  25 
fellow-traveler's.     The  ways  of  men  seem  always  very 
trivial  to  us  when  we  find  ourselves  alone  on  a  church- 
top,  with  the  blue  sky  and  a  few  tall  pinnacles,  and  see 
far  below  us  the  steep  roofs  and  foreshortened  buttresses, 
and  the  silent  activity  of  the  city  streets;  but  how  much  30 
more  must  they  not  have  seemed  so  to  him  as  he  stood, 
not  only  above  other  men's  business,  but  above  other 
men's  climate,  in  a  golden  zone  like  Apollo's! 

This  was  the  sort  of  pleasure  I  found  in  the  country 


EXPOSITION  245 

of  which  I  write.  The  pleasure  was  to  be  out  of  the  wind, 
and  to  keep  it  in  memory  all  the  time,  and  hug  oneself 
upon  the  shelter.  And  it  was  only  by  the  sea  that  any  such 
sheltered  places  were  to  be  found.     Between  the  black 

5  worm-eaten  headlands  there  are  little  bights  and  havens, 
well  screened  from  the  wind  and  the  commotion  of  the 
external  sea,  where  the  sand  and  weeds  look  up  into  the 
gazer's  face  from  a  depth  of  tranquil  water,  and  the  sea- 
birds,  screaming  and  flickering  from  the  ruined  crags, 

10  alone  disturb  the  silence  and  the  sunshine.  One  such 
place  has  impressed  itself  on  my  memory  beyond  all  others. 
On  a  rock  by  the  water's  edge,  old  fighting  men  of  the 
Norse  breed  had  planted  a  double  castle;  the  two  stood 
wall  to  wall  like  semi-detached  villas ;  and  yet  feud  had  run 

15  so  high  between  their  owners,  that  one,  from  out  of  a 
window,  shot  the  other  as  he  stood  in  his  own  doorway. 
There  is  something  in  the  juxtaposition  of  these  two 
enemies  full  of  tragic  irony.  It  is  grim  to  think  of  bearded 
men  and  bitter  women  taking  hateful  counsel  together 

20  about  the  two  hall-fires  at  night,  when  the  sea  boomed 
against  the  foundations  and  the  wild  winter  wind  was 
loose  over  the  battlements.  And  in  the  study  we  may 
reconstruct  for  ourselves  some  pale  figure  of  what  Ufe  then 
was.     Not  so  when  we  are  there;  when  we  are  there  such 

25  thoughts  come  to  us  only  to  intensify  a  contrary  impression, 
and  association  is  turned  against  itself.  I  remember 
walking  thither  three  afternoons  in  succession,  my  eyes 
weary  with  being  set  against  the  wind,  and  how,  dropping 
suddenly  over  the  edge  of  the  down,  I  found  myself  in  a 

30  new  world  of  warmth  and  shelter.  The  wind,  from  which 
I  had  escaped,  "as  from  an  enemy,"  was  seemingly  quite 
local.  It  carried  no  clouds  with  it,  and  came  from  such  a 
quarter  that  it  did  not'  trouble  the  sea  within  view.  The 
two  castles,  black  and  ruinous  as  the  rocks  about  them, 


246  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

were  still  distinguished  from  these  by  something  more 
insecure  and  fantastic  in  the  outline,  something  that  the 
last  storm  had  left  imminent  and  the  next  would  demolish 
entirely.  It  would  be  difficult  to  render  in  words  the  sense 
of  peace  that  took  possession  of  me  on  these  three  after-  5 
noons.  It  was  helped  out,  as  I  have  said,  by  the  contrast. 
The  shore  was  battered  and  bemauled  by  previous  tem- 
pests; I  had  the  memory  at  heart  of  the  insane  strife  of  the 
pigmies  who  had  erected  these  two  castles  and  lived  in 
them  in  mutual  distrust  and  enmity,  and  knew  I  had  only  lo 
to  put  my  head  out  of  this  little  cup  of  shelter  to  find  the 
hard  wind  blowing  in  my  eyes;  and  yet  there  were  the  two 
great  tracts  of  motionless  blue  air  and  peaceful  sea  Iqoking 
on,  unconcerned  and  apart,  at  the  turmoil  of  the  present 
moment  and  the  memorials  of  the  precarious  past.  There  15 
is  ever  something  transitory  and  fretful  in  the  impression 
of  a  high  wind  under  a  cloudless  sky;  it  seems  to  have  no 
root  in  the  constitution  of  things;  it  must  speedily  begin  to 
faint  and  wither  away  like  a  cut  flower.  And  on  those 
days  the  thought  of  the  wind  and  the  thought  of  human  20 
life  came  very  near  together  in  my  mind.  Our  noisy 
years  did  indeed  seem  moments  in  the  being  of  the  eternal 
silence:  and  the  wind,  in  the  face  of  that  great  field  of 
stationary  blue,  was  as  the  wind  of  a  butterfly's  wing. 
The  placidity  of  the  sea  was  a  thing  likewise  to  be  remem-  25 
bered.  Shelley  speaks  of  the  sea  as  "  hungering  for  calm, " 
and  in  this  place  one  learned  to  understand  the  phrase. 
Looking  down  into  these  green  waters  from  the  broken 
edge  of  the  rock,  or  swimming  leisurely  in  the  sunshine,  it 
seemed  to  me  that  they  were  enjoying  their  own  tran-  30 
quillity  and  when  now  and  again  it  was  disturbed  by  a 
wind  ripple  on  the  surface,  or  the  quick  black  passage 
of  a  fish  far  below,  they  settled  b^ck  again  (one  could 
fancy)  with  relief. 


EXPOSITION  U7 

On  shore,  too,  in  the  little  nook  of  shelter,  everything 

was  so  subdued  and  still  that  the  least  particular  struck 

in  me  a  pleasurable  surprise.     The  desultory  crackling 

of  the  whin-pods  in  the  afternoon  sun  usurped  the  ear. 

5  The   hot,   sweet    breath    of    the    bank,    that   had   been 

saturated  all  day  long  with  sunshine,  and  now  exhaled  it 

into  my  face,  was  like  the  breath  of  a  fellow-creature.     I 

remember  that  I  was  haunted  by  two  lines  of  French  verse ; 

in  some  dumb  way  they  seemed  to  fit  my  surroundings 

10  and  give  expression  to  the  contentment  that  was  in  me,  and 

I  kept  repeating  to  myself — 

"Mon  coeur  est  un  luth  suspendu, 
Sitot  qu'  on  le  louche,  il  resonne." 

I  can  give  no  reason  why  these  lines  came  to  me  at  this 

15  time;  and  for  that  very  cause  I  repeat  them  here.  For 
all  I  know,  they  may  serve  to  complete  the  impression  in 
the  mind  of  the  reader,  as  they  were  certainly  a  part  of  it 
for  me. 

And  this  happened  to  me  in  the  place  of  all  others 

20  where  I  liked  least  to  stay.  When  I  think  of  it  I  grow 
ashamed  of  my  own  ingratitude.  "Out  of  the  strong 
came  forth  sweetness."  There,  in  the  bleak  and  gusty 
North,  I  received,  perhaps,  my  strongest  impression  of 
peace.     I  saw  the  sea  to  be  great  and  calm;  and  the  earth, 

25  in  that  little  corner,  was  all  alive  and  friendly  to  me.  So, 
wherever  a  man  is,  he  will  find  something  to  please  and 
pacify  him :  in  the  town  he  will  meet  pleasant  faces  of  men 
and  women,  and  see  beautiful  flowers  at  a  window,  or 
hear  a  cage-bird  singing  at  the  corner  of  the  gloomiest 

30  street;  and  for  the  country,  there  is  no  country  without 
some  amenity — let  him  only  look  for  it  in  the  right  spirit, 
and  he  will  surely  find. 

Suggestions:  In  his  essay  called  A  College  Magazine,    Ste- 
venson says,  of  his  own  early  practice  in  writing:  *'I  have  played 


248  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

the  sedulous  ape  to  Hazlitt,  Lamb,  Wordsworth,  etc.   ..." 

Can  you  decide  upon  and  name  definitely,  any  character- 
istics of  style  which  Stevenson  may  have  learned  from  Lamb.^ 
What  differences  do  you  note?  Compare  the  vocabulary  of 
the  two  writers. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

(See  list  under  Lamb.) 


DESCRIPTION 


THE  SIX  JOLI.Y  FELLOWSHIP-PORTERS* 

Charles  Dickens 

THE  Six  Jolly  Fellowship-Porters,  already  mentioned 
as   a  tavern  of  a  dropsical  appearance,  had  long 
settled  down  into  a  state  of  hale  infirmity.     In  its  whole 
constitution  it  had  not  a  straight  floor,   and  hardly  a 
5  straight  line;  but  it  had  outlasted,  and  clearly  would  yet 
outlast,  many  a  better-trimmed  building,  many  a  sprucer 
public-house.     Externally,    it    was    a    narrow,    lop-sided 
wooden  jumble  of  corpulent  windows,  heaped  one  upon 
another  as  you  might  heap  as  many  toppling  oranges, 
10  with  a  crazy  wooden  veranda  impending  over  the  water; 
indeed,   the  whole  house,   inclusive  of  the  complaining 
flag-staff  on  the  roof,  impended  over  the  water,  but  seemed 
to  have  got  into  the  condition  of  a  faint-hearted  diver 
who  has  paused  so  long  on  the  brink  that  he  will  never  go 
15  in  at  all. 

This  description  applies  to  the  river-frontage  of  the 
Six  Jolly  Fellowship-Porters.     The  back  of  the  establish- 
ment, though  the  chief  entrance  was  there,  so  contracted 
that  it  merely  represented,  in  its  connection  with  the  front, 
20  the  handle  of  a  flat-iron,  set  upright  on  its  broadest  end. 
This  handle  stood  at  the  bottom  of  a  wilderness  of  court 
and  alley:  which  wilderness  pressed  so  hard  and  close 
upon  the  Six   Jolly  Fellowship-Porters  as  to  leave  the 
hostelry  not   an   inch  of  ground  beyond  its  door.     For 
25  this  reason,  in  combination  with  the  fact  that  the  house 
was  all  but  afloat  at  high  water,  when  the  Porters  had  a 
*Our  Mviual  Friend.    Chapter  6. 
251 


252  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

family  wash,  the  linen  subjected  to  that  operation  might 
usually  be  seen  drying  on  lines  stretched  across  the  recep- 
tion-rooms and  bed-chambers. 


AVENEL  CASTLE* 

Sir  Walter  Scott 

WHILE  he  thus  spoke,  the  verge  of  the  morass  was 
attained,  and  their  path'  lay  on  the  declivity. 
Greensward  it  was,  and,  viewed  from  a  distance,  checkered 
with  its  narrow  and  verdant  line  the  dark-brown  heath 
which  it  traversed,  though  the  distinction  was  not  so  5 
easily  traced  when  they  were  walking  on  itf.  The  old 
man  pursued  his  journey  with  comparative  ease;  and, 
unwilling  again  to  awaken  the  jealous  zeal  of  his  young 
companion  for  the  Roman  faith,  he  discoursed  on  other 
matters.  The  tone  of  his  conversation  was  still  grave,  lO 
moral,  and  instructive.  He  had  traveled  much,  and  knew 
both  the  language  and  manners  of  other  countries,  con- 
cerning which  Halbert  Glendinning,  already  anticipating 
the  possibility  of  being  obliged  to  leave  Scotland  for  the 
deed  he  had  done,  was  naturally  and  anxiously  desirous  15 
of  information.  By  degrees  he  was  more  attracted  by  the 
charms  of  the  stranger's  conversation  than  repelled  by  the 
dread  of  his  dangerous  character  as  a  heretic,  and  Halbert 
had  called  him  father  more  than  once,  ere  the  turrets  of 
Avenel  Castle  came  in  view.  20 

The  situation  of  this  ancient  fortress  was  remarkable. 
It  occupied  a  small  rocky  islet  in  a  mountain  lake,  or 

^The  Monastery.     Chapters  23  and  24. 

tThis  sort  of  path,  visible  when  looked  at  from  a  distance,  but  not 
to  be  seen  when  you  are  upon  it,  is  called  on  the  Border  by  the  signifi- 
cant name  of  a  blind-road. 


DESCRIPTION  253 

"tarn,"  as  such  a  piece  of  water  is  called  in  Westmoreland. 
The  lake  might  be  about  a  mile  in  circumference,  sur- 
rounded by  hills  of  considerable  height,  which,  except 
where  old  trees  and  brushwood  occupied  the  ravines  that 

5  divided  them  from  each  other,  were  bare  and  heathy. 
The  surprise  of  the  spectator  was  chiefly  excited  by  finding 
a  piece  of  water  situated  in  that  high  and  mountainous 
region,  and  the  landscape  around  had  features  which 
might  rather  be  termed  wild,   than  either  romantic  or 

10  sublime;  yet  the  scene  was  not  without  its  charms.  Under 
the  burning  sun  of  summer,  the  clear  azure  of  the  deep 
unruffled  lake  refreshed  the  eye,  and  impressed  the  mind 
with  a  pleasing  feeling  of  deep  solitude.  In  winter, 
when  the  snow  lay  on  the  mountains  around,  these  dazzling 

15  masses  appeared  to  ascend  far  beyond  their  wonted  and 
natural  height,  while  the  lake,  which  stretched  beneath, 
and  filled  their  bosom  with  all  its  frozen  waves,  lay  like 
the  surface  of  a  darkened  and  broken  mirror  around  the 
black  and  rocky  islet,  and  the  walls  of  the  gray  castle 

20  with  which  it  was  crowned. 

As  the  castle  occupied,  either  with  its  principal  buildings, 
or  with  its  flanking  and  outward  walls,  every  projecting 
point  of  rock,  which  served  as  its  site,  it  seemed  as  com- 
pletely surrounded  by  water  as  the  nest  of  a  wild  swan, 

25  save  where  a  narrow  causeway  extended  betwixt  the 
islet  and  the  shore.  But  the  fortress  was  larger  in  ap- 
pearance than  in  reality;  and  of  the  buildings  which  it 
actually  contained,  many  had  become  ruinous  and  un- 
inhabitable.    In  the  times  of  the  grandeur  of  the  Avenel 

30  family,  these  had  been  occupied  by  a  considerable  garrison 
of  followers  and  retainers,  but  they  were  now  in  a  great 
measure  deserted;  and  Julian  Avenel  would  probably 
have  fixed  his  habitation  in  a  residence  better  suited  to  his 
diminished  fortunes,  had  it  not  been  for  the  great  security 


254  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

which  the  situation  of  the  old  castle  afforded  to  a  man  of 
his  precarious  and  perilous  mode  of  life.  Indeed,  in  this 
respect,  the  spot  could  scarce  have  been  more  happily 
chosen,  for  it  could  be  rendered  almost  completely  in- 
accessible at  the  pleasure  of  the  inhabitant.  The  distance  5 
betwixt  the  nearest  shore  and  the  islet  was  not  indeed 
above  a  hundred  yards;  but  then  the  causeway  which 
connected  them  was  extremely  narrow,  and  completely 
divided  by  two  cuts,  one  in  the  mid-way  between  the  islet 
and  shore,  and  another  close  under  the  outward  gate  of  10 
the  castle.  These  formed  a  formidable,  and  almost 
insurmountable,  interruption  to  any  hostile  approach. 
Each  was  defended  by  a  drawbridge,  one  of  which,  being 
that  nearest  to  the  castle,  was  regularly  raised  at  all  times 
during  the  day,  and  both  were  lifted  at  night.  16 

When,  issuing  from  the  gorge  of  a  pass  which  terminated 
upon  the  lake,  the  travelers  came  in  sight  of  the  ancient 
castle  of  Avenel,  the  old  man  looked  with  earnest  attention 
upon  the  scene  before  him.  The  castle  was,  as  we  have 
said,  in  many  places  ruinous,  as  was  evident,  eyen  at  this  20 
distance,  by  the  broken,  rugged,  and  irregular  outline  of 
the  walls  and  of  the  towers.  In  others  it  seemed  more 
entire,  and  a  pillar  of  dark  smoke,  which  ascended  from 
the  chimneys  of  the  donjon,  and  spread  its  long  dusky 
pennon  through  the  clear  ether,  indicated  that  it  was  25 
inhabited.  But  no  corn-fields  or  enclosed  pasture-grounds 
on  the  side  of  the  lake  showed  that  provident  attention  to 
comfort  and  subsistence  which  usually  appeared  near  the 
houses  of  the  greater,  and  even  of  the  lesser,  barons. 
There  were  no  cottages  with  their  patches  of  infield,  30 
and  their  crofts  and  gardens,  surrounded  by  rows  of 
massive  sycamores;  no  church  with  its  simple  tower  in  the 
valley;  no  herds  of  sheep  among  the  hills;  no  castle  on  the 


DESCRIPTION  255 

lower  ground;  nothing  which  intimated  the  occasional 
prosecution  of  the  arts  of  peace  and  of  industry.  It  was 
plain  that  the  inhabitants,  whether  few  or  numerous,  must 
be  considered  as  the  garrison  of  the  castle,  living  within  its 
defended  precincts,  and  subsisting  by  means  which  were 
other  than  peaceful. 


THE  DUCAL  PALACE* 
John  Ruskin 

BEFORE  the  reader  can  enter  upon  any  inquiry  into 
the  history  of  the  Ducal  Palace,  it  is  necessary  that 
he  should  be  throughly  familiar  with  the  arrangement 
10  and  names  of  its  principal  parts,  as  it  at  present  stands; 
otherwise  he  cannot  comprehend  so  much  as  a  single 
sentence  of  any  of  the  documents  referring  to  it,  I  must 
do  what  I  can,  by  the  help  of  a  rough  plan  and  bird's-eye 
view,  to  give  him  the  necessary  topographical  knowledge. 

15  The  reader  will  observe  that  the  Ducal  Palace  is  arranged 
somewhat  in  the  form  of  a  hollow  square,  of  which  one 
side  faces  the  Piazzetta,  and  another  the  quay  called  Riva 
de'  Schiavoni ;  the  third  is  on  the  dark  canal  called  Rio  del 
Palazzo,  and  the  fourth  joins  the  Church  of  St.  Mark. 

20  Of  this  fourth  side,  therefore,  nothing  can  be  seen.  Of 
the  other  three  sides  we  shall  have  to  speak  constantly; 
and  they  will  be  respectively  called,  that  toward  the 
Piazzetta,  the  "Piazzetta  Fa9ade;"  that  toward  the 
Riva  de'  Schiavoni,  the  "Sea  Fa9ade;"  and  that  toward 

25  the  Rio  del  Palazzo,  the  "Rio  Fa9ade."  This  Rio,  or 
*St(mes  of  Venice.    Library  edition,  vol.  10. 


256  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

canal,  is  usually  looked  upon  by  the  traveler  with  great 
respect,  or  even  horror,  because  it  passes  under  the  Bridge 
of  Siglis.  It  is,  however,  one  of  the  principal  thorough- 
fares of  the  city;  and  the  bridge  and  its  canal  together 
occupy,  in  the  mind  of  a  Venetian,  very  much  the  position  5 
of  Fleet  Street  and  Temple  Bar  in  that  of  a  Londoner, — 
at  least  at  the  time  when  Temple  Bar  was  occasionally 
decorated  with  human  heads.  The  two  buildings  closely 
resemble  each  other  in  form. 

We  must  now  proceed  to  obtain  some  rough  idea  of  10 
the    appearance    and    distribution    of    the   palace   itself; 
but  its  arrangement  will  be  better  understood  by  sup- 
posing ourselves  raised  some  hundred  and  fifty  feet  above 
the  point  in  the  lagoon  in  front  of  it,  so  as  to  get  a  general 
view  of  the  Sea  Fa9ade  and  Rio  Fa9ade(the  latter  in  very  15 
steep  perspective)  and  to  look  down  into  its  interior  court. 
Fig.   II*   roughly  represents   such   a  view,   omitting   all 
details  on  the  roofs,  in  order  to  avoid  confusion.     In  this 
drawing  we  have  merely  to  notice  that,  of  the  two  bridges 
seen  on  the  right,  the  uppermost,  above  the  Rio  del  Pa-  20 
lazzo,  is  the  Bridge  of  Sighs;  the  lower  one  is  the  Ponte 
della  Paglia,  the  regular  thoroughfare  from  quay  to  quay, 
and,  I  believe,  called  the  Bridge  of  Straws,  because  the 
boats  which  brought  straw  from  the  mainland  used  to  sell 
it  at  this  place.     The  corner  of  the  palace,  rising  above  25 
this  bridge,  and  formed  by  the  meeting  of  the  Sea  Fa9ade 
and  Rio  Fa9ade,  will  always  be  called  the  Vine  angle, 
because  it  is  decorated  by  a  sculpture  of  the  drunkenness 
of  Noah.     The  angle  opposite  will  be  called  the  Fig-tree 
angle  because  it  is  decorated  by  a  sculpture  of  the  Fall  30 
of  Man.    The  long  and  narrow  range  of  building,  of  which 
the  roof  is  seen  in  perspective  behind  this  angle,  is  the  part 
of  the  palace  fronting  the  Piazzetta;  and  the  angle  under 

♦Ruskin's  drawings  have  been  omitted. 


DESCRIPTION  257 

the  pinnacle  most  to  the  left  of  the  two  which  terminate 
it  will  be  called,  for  a  reason  presently  to  be  stated,  the 
Judgment  angle.  Within  the  square  formed  by  the 
building  is  seen  its  interior  court  (with  one  of  its  wells) , 
5  terminated  by  small  and  fantastic  buildings  of  the  Re- 
naissance period,  which  face  the  Giant's  stair,  of  which 
the  extremity  is  seen  sloping  down  on  the  left. 

The   great   fa9ade   which   fronts   the   spectator   looks 
southward.     Hence  the  two  traceried  windows  lower  than 

10  the  rest,  and  to  the  right  of  the  spectator,  may  be  conve- 
niently distinguished  as  the  "Eastern  Windows."  There 
are  two  others  like  them,  filled  with  tracery,  and  at  the 
same  level,  which  look  upon  the  narrow  canal  between 
the  Ponte  della  Paglia  and  the  Bridge  of  Sighs:  these  we 

15  may  conveniently  call  the  "Canal  Windows."  The 
spectator  will  observe  a  vertical  line  in  this  dark  side  of 
the  palace,  separating  its  nearer  and  plainer  wall  from  a 
long  four-storied  range  of  rich  architecture.  This  more 
distant  range  is  entirely  Renaissance:  its  extremity  is  not 

•20  indicated,  because  I  have  no  accurate  sketch  of  the  small 
buildings  and  bridges  beyond  it,  and  we  shall  have  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  this  part  of  the  palace  in  our  present 
inquiry.  The  nearer  and  undecorated  wall  is  part  of  the 
older  palace,  though  much  defaced  by  modern  opening  of 

25  common  windows,  refittings  of  the  brickwork,  etc. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  fa9ade  is  composed  of  a 
smooth  mass  of  wall,  sustained  on  two  tiers  of  pillars,  one 

above  the  other The  two  lower  stories  [behind  the 

two  tiers  of  pillars]  are  entirely  modernized,  .  .  .  and  what 

30  vestiges  remain  of  ancient  masonry  are  entirely  unde- 
cipherable      With  the  subdivisions  of  these  stories, 

therefore,  I  shall  not  trouble  the  reader;  but  those  of  the 
great  upper  story  are  highly  important. 

In  the  bird's-eye  view,  we  noticed  that  the  two  windows 


258  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

on  the  right  are  lower  than  the  other  four  of  the  fa9ade. 
In  this  arrangement  there  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
instances  I  know  of  the  daring  sacrifice  of  symmetry  to 
convenience  which  was  one  of  the  chief  noblenesses  of  the 
Gothic  schools.  5 

The  part  of  the  palace  in  which  the  two  lower  windows 
occur,  we  shall  find,  was  first  built,  and  arranged  in  four 
stories,  in  order  to  obtain  the  necessary  number  of  apart- 
ments. Owing  to  circumstances,  of  which  we  shall 
presently  give  an  account,  it  became  necessary,  in  the  10 
beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century,  to  provide  another 
large  and  magnificent  chamber  for  the  meeting  of  the 
Senate.  That  chamber  was  added  at  the  side  of  the  older 
building:  but,  as  only  one  room  was  wanted,  there  was  no 
need  to  divide  the  added  portion  into  two  stories.  The  15 
entire  height  was  given  to  the  single  chamber,  being  indeed 
not  too  great  for  just  harmony  with  its  enormous  length 
and  breadth.  And  then  came  the  question  how  to  place 
the  windows,  whether  on  a  line  with  the  two  others,  or 
above  them.  20 

The  ceiling  of  the  new  room  was  to  be  adorned  by 
the  paintings  of  the  best  masters  in  Venice,  and  it  became 
of  great  importance  to  raise  the  light  near  that  gorgeous 
roof,  as  well  as  to  keep  the  tone  of  illumination  in  the 
Council  Chamber  serene;  and  therefore  to  introduce  light  26 
rather  in  simple  masses  than  in  many  broken  streams. 
A  modern  architect,  terrified  at  the  idea  of  violating  ex- 
ternal symmetry,  would  have  sacrificed  both  the  pictures 
and  the  peace  of  the  Council.  He  would  have  placed  the 
larger  windows  at  the  same  level  with  the  other  two,  and  30 
have  introduced  above  them  smaller  windows,  like  those 
of  the  upper  story  in  the  older  building,  as  if  that 
upper  story  had  been  continued  along  the  fa9ade.  But 
the  old  Venetian  thought  of  the  honor  of  the  paintings, 


DESCRIPTION  259 

and  the  comfort  of  the  Senate,  before  his  own  reputation. 
He  unhesitatingly  raised  the  large  windows  to  their  proper 
position  with  reference  to  the  interior  of  the  chamber,  and 
suffered  the  external  appearance  to  take  care  of  itself. 
5  And  I  believe  the  whole  pile  rather  gains  than  loses  in 
effect  by  the  variation  thus  obtained  in  the  spaces  of  wall 
above  and  below  the  windows. 

In  nearly  the  center  of  the  Sea  Fa9ade,  and  between  the 
first  and  second  windows  of  the  Great  Council  Chamber, 

10  is  a  large  window  to  the  ground,  opening  on  a  balcony, 
which  is  one  of  the  chief  ornaments  of  the  palace,  and  will 
be  called  in  future  the  "Sea  Balcony." 

The  facade  which  looks  on  the  Piazzetta  is  very  nearly 
like  this  to  the  Sea,  but  the  greater  part  of  it  was  built 

15  in  the  fifteenth  century,  when  people  had  become  studious 
of  their  symmetries.  Its  side  windows  are  all  on  the 
same  level.  Two  light  the  west  end  of  the  Great  Council 
Chamber,  one  lights  a  small  room  anciently  called  the 
Quarantia  Civil  Nuova;  the  other  three,  and  the  central 

20  one,  with  a  balcony  like  that  to  the  Sea,  light  another 
large  chamber,  called  Sala  del  Scrutino,  or  "Hall  of 
Inquiry,"  which  extends  to  the  extremity  of  the  palace 
above  the  Porta  della  Carta. 

The  reader  is  now  well  enough  acquainted  with  the 

25  topography  of  the  existing  building,  to  be  able  to  follow 
the  accounts  of  its  history. 

Suggestions:  These  three  descriptions, — of  the  old  inn, 
the  medieval,  castle,  and  the  Venetian  palace,  respectively, — 
should  be  studied  separately  and  then  in  comparison  with  one 
another.  How  does  the  purpose  of  the  first  two  differ  from 
that  of  the  third?  How  does  the  purpose,  in  each  case,  react 
upon  the  description?  Are  the  differences  merely  of  length  or 
of  method  also?  How  does  the  point  of  view  in  the  descrip- 
tions by  Dickens  and  by  Ruskin  differ  from  that  in  the  description 


260  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

by  Scott?  Is  any  definite  "order  of  perception"  followed  in 
Avenel  Castle  ?  What  does  Halbert  see  first  ? — what  afterward  ? 
Is  Scott's  description  weak  at  any  point?  Show,  if  possible, 
that  this  same  method  is  followed  in  The  Ducal  Palace.  How 
does  each  description  convey  the  impression  of  "perspective?" 

In  Ruskin's  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture*  the  following  arch- 
itectural principle  is  formulated.  Show  its  application  to  written 
description. 

"It  has  often  been  observed  that  a  building,  in  order  to  show 
its  magnitude,  must  be  seen  all  at  once; — it  would,  perhaps, 
be  better  to  say,  must  be  bounded  as  much  as  possible  by  con- 
tinuous lines,  and  that  its  extreme  points  should  be  seen  all  at 
once;  or  we  may  state,  in  simpler  terms,  still,  that  it  must  have 
one  visible  bounding  line  from  top  to  bottom,  and  from  end  to 
end  ....  If  the  bounding  line  be  violently  broken,  . . .  majesty 
will  be  lost  ....  This  error  is  even  more  fatal  when  much  of 
the  building  is  concealed;  as  in  the  well-known  case  of  the  reces- 
sion of  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's,  and  from  the  greater  number  of 
points  of  view,  in  churches  whose  highest  portions,  whether 
dome  or  tower,  are  over  their  cross.  Thus  there  is  only  one  point 
from  which  the  size  of  the  Cathedral  of  Florence  is  felt;  and 
that  is  from  the  corner  of  the  Via  de'  Balestrieri,  opposite  the 
southeast  angle,  where  it  happens  that  the  dome  is  seen  rising 
instantly  above  the  apse  and  transepts." 

After  choosing  your  subject,  write  two  descriptions  of  it, 
one  from  a  moving,  one  from  a  stationary  point  of  view.  Re- 
member Ruskin's  rule  for  seeing  a  building  all  at  once,  and 
choose  your  point  of  view  accordingly.  Let  one  exercise  be 
written  as  part  of  a  narrative,  if  you  so  prefer.  The  other 
may  be  an  elaborate  description  of  plan  and  construction.  In 
each  case,  get  a  good  suggestive  "fundamental  image." 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

A  dwelling-house,  which  you  are  approaching  for  the  first 
time. 

A  dwelling-house  with  which  you  are  familiar. 
A  church. 

♦Library  edition,  vol.  8.    The  Lamp  of  Power,  p.  6. 


DESCRIPTION  ^61 


A  college  hall. 

The  handsomest  building  at College. 

A  capitol. 

An  old  house. 

The   most   striking   house    I   know. 

The   most  picturesque   house   I   know. 


THE  CHAPEL  AT  ENGADDI* 

Sir  Walter  Scott 

SO  saying,  and  making  the  knight  a  sign  to  follow  him, 
the  hermit  went  toward  the  altar,  and,  passing 
behind  it,  pressed  a  spring,  which,  opening  without  noise, 
showed  a  small  iron  door  wrought  in  the  side  of  the  cavern, 

5  so  as  to  be  almost  imperceptible,  unless  upon  the  most 
severe  scrutiny.  The  hermit,  ere  he  ventured  fully  to 
open  the  door,  dropt  on  the  hinges  some  oil  which  the 
lamp  supplied.  A  small  staircase,  hewn  in  the  rock,  was 
discovered  when  the  iron  door  was  at  length  completely 

10  opened. 

"Take  the  veil  which  I  hold,"  said  the  hermit,  in  a 
melancholy  tone,  "and  blind  mine  eyes;  for  I  may  not 
look  on  the  treasure  which  thou  art  presently  to  behold, 
without  sin  and  presumption." 

15  Without  reply,  the  knight  hastily  muffled  the  recluse's 
head  in  the  veil,  and  the  latter  began  to  ascend  the  staircase 
as  one  too  much  accustomed  to  the  way  to  require  the  use 
of  light,  while  at  the  same  time  he  held  the  lamp  to  the 
Scot,  who  followed  him  for  many  steps  up  the  narrow 

20  ascent.     At  length  they  rested  in  a  small  vault  of  irregular 
form,  in  one  nook  of  which  the  staircase  terminated,  while 
♦From  The  Talisman.     Chapter  iv. 


262  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

in  another  corner  a  corresponding  stair  was  seen  to  con- 
tinue the  ascent.  In  a  third  angle  was  a  Gothic  door, 
very  rudely  ornamented  with  the  usual  attributes  of  clustered 
columns  and  carving,  and  defended  by  a  wicket,  strongly 
guarded  with  iron,  and  studded  with  large  nails.  To  5 
this  last  point  the  hermit  directed  his  steps,  which  seemed 
to  falter  as  he  approached  it. 

"Put  off  thy  shoes,"  he  said  to  his  attendant;  "the 
ground  on  which  thou   standest  is  holy.     Banish  from 
thy  innermost  heart  each  profane  and  carnal  thought,   10 
for  to  harbor  such  while  in  this  place  were  a  deadly  im- 
piety." 

The  knight  laid  aside  his  shoes  as  he  was  commanded 
and  the  hermit  stood  in  the  meanwhile  as  if  communing 
with  his  soul  in  secret  prayer,  and  when  he  again  moved,  15 
commanded  the  knight  to  knock  at  the  wicket  three  times. 
He  did  so.  The  door  opened  spontaneously,  at  least 
Sir  Kenneth  beheld  no  one,  and  his  senses  were  at  once 
assailed  by  a  stream  of  the  purest  light,  and  by  a  strong- 
and  almost  oppressive  sense  of  the  richest  perfumes.  He  20 
stepped  two  or  .three  paces  back,  and  it  was  the  space  of  a 
minute  ere  he  recovered  from  the  dazzling  and  overpower- 
ing effects  of  the  sudden  change  from  darkness  to  light. 

When  he  entered  the  apartment  in  which  this  brilliant 
luster  was  displayed,  he  perceived  that  the  light  proceeded  25 
from  a  combination  of  silver  lamps,  fed  with  purest  oil, 
and  sending  forth  the  richest  odors,  hanging  by  silver 
chains  from  the  roof  of  a  small  Gothic  chapel,  hewn,  like 
most  part  of  the  hermit's  singular  mansion,  out  of  the 
sound  and  solid  rock.  But,  whereas,  in  every  other  place  30 
which  Sir  Kenneth  had  seen,  the  labor  employed  upon  the 
rock  had  been  of  the  simplest  and  coarsest  description, 
it  had  in  this  chapel  employed  the  invention  and  the 
chisels  of  the  most  able  architects.     The  groined  roof  rose 


DESCRIPTION  263 

from  six  columns  on  each  side,  carved  with  the  rarest 
skill ;  and  the  manner  in  which  the  crossings  of  the  concave 
arches  were  bound  together,  as  it  were,  with  appropriate 
ornaments,  was  all  in  the  finest  tone  of  the  architecture 
5  and  of  the  age.  Corresponding  to  the  line  of  pillars, 
there  were  on  each  side  six  richly  wrought  niches,  each  of 
which  contained  the  image  of  one  of  the  twelve  apostles. 

At  the  upper  and  eastern  end  of  the  chapel  stood  the 
altar,  behind  which  a  very  rich  curtain  of  Persian  silk, 

10  embroidered  deeply  with  gold,  covered  a  recess,  containing, 
unquestionably,  some  image  or  relic  of  no  ordinary  sanctity, 
in  honor  of  whom  this  singular  place  of  worship  had  been 
erected.  Under  the  persuasion  that  this  must  be  the  case, 
the  knight  advanced  to  the  shrine,  and,  kneeling  down 

15  before  it,  repeated  his  devotions  with  fervency,  during 
which  his  attention  was  disturbed  by  the  curtain  being 
suddenly  raised,  or  rather  pulled  aside,  how  or  by  whom 
he  saw  not;  but  in  the  niche  which  was  thus  disclosed  he 
beheld  a  cabinet  of  silver  and  ebony,  with  a  double  folding- 

20  door,  the  whole  formed  into  the  miniature  resemblance 
of  a  Gothic  church. 

As  he  gazed  with  anxious  curiosity  on  the  shrine,  the 
two  folding-doors  also  flew  open,  discovering  a  large  piece 
of  wood,   on  which    were    blazoned    the    words    "vera 

25  crux;"  at  the  same  time  a  choir  of  female  voices  sung 
Gloria  Patri.  The  instant  the  strain  had  ceased,  the  shrine 
was  closed  and  the  curtain  again  drawn,  and  the  knight 
who  knelt  at  the  altar  might  now  continue  his  devotions 
undisturbed  in  honor  of  the  holy  relic  which  had  been 

30  just  disclosed  to  his  view.  He  did  this  imder  the  profound 
impression  of  one  who  had  witnessed,  with  his  own  eyes, 
an  awful  evidence  of  the  truth  of  his  religion,  and  it  was 
some  time  ere,  concluding  his  orisons,  he  arose  and  ven- 
tured to  look  around  him  for  the  hermit,  who  had  guided 


264  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

him  to  this  sacred  and  mysterious  spot.  He  beheld  him, 
his  head  still  muffled  in  the  veil  which  he  had  himself 
wrapped  around  it,  couching,  like  a  rated  hound,  upon  the 
threshold  of  the  chapel,  but,  apparently,  without  venturing 
to  cross  it:  the  holiest  reverence,  the  most  penitential  5 
remorse  was  expressed  by  his  posture,  which  seemed  that 
of  a  man  borne  down  and  crushed  to  the  earth  by  the 
burden  of  his  inward  feelings.  It  seemed  to  the  Scot  that 
only  the  sense  of  the  deepest  penitence,  remorse,  and  humil- 
iation could  have  thus  prostrated  a  frame  so  strong  and  a  10 
spirit  so  fiery. 

He  approached  him  as  if  to  speak,  but  the  recluse  an- 
ticipated his  purpose,  murmuring  in  stifled  tones  from 
beneath  the  fold  in  which  his  head  was  muffled,  and  which 
sounded  like  a  voice  proceeding  from  the  cerements  of  a  15 
corpse:  "Abide — abide;  happy  thou  that  mayst — the 
vision  is  not  yet  ended."  So  saying,  he  reared  himself 
from  the  ground,  drew  back  from  the  threshold  on  which 
he  had  hitherto  lain  prostrate,  and  closed  the  door  of  the 
chapel,  which,  secured  by  a  spring-bolt  within,  the  snap  20 
of  which  resounded  through  the  place,  appeared  so  much 
like  a  part  of  the  living  rock  from  which  the  cavern  was 
hewn  that  Kenneth  could  hardly  discern  where  the  aperture 
had  been.  He  was  now  alone  in  the  lighted  chapel, 
which  contained  the  relic  to  which  he  had  lately  rendered  25 
his  homage,  without  other  arms  than  his  dagger,  or  other 
companion  than  his  pious  thoughts  and  dauntless  courage. 

Uncertain  what  was  next  to  happen,  but  resolved  to 
abide  the  course  of  events,  Sir  Kenneth  paced  the  solitary 
chapel  till  about  the  time  of  the  earliest  cock-crowing.  30 
At  this'dead  season,  when  night  and  morning  met  together, 
he  heard,  but  from  what  quarter  he  could  not  discover, 
the  sound  of  such  a  small  silver  bell  as  is  rung  at  the 
elevation  of  the  host,  in  the  ceremony,  or  sacrifice,  as  it 


DESCRIPTION  265 

has  been  called,  of  the  mass.  The  hour  and  the  place 
rendered  the  sound  fearfully  solemn,  and,  bold  as  he  was, 
the  knight  withdrew  himself  into  the  farther  nook  of  the 
chapel,  at  the  end  opposite  to  the  altar,  in  order  to  observe, 

5  without  interruption,  the  consequences  of  this  unexpected 
signal. 

He  did  not  wait  long  ere  the  silken  curtain  was  again 
withdrawn,  and  the  relic  again  presented  to  his  view. 
x\s  he  sunk  reverentially  on  his  knee,  he  heard  the  sound 

10  of  the  lauds,  or  earliest  office  of  the  Catholic  Church, 
sung  by  female  voices,  which  united  together  in  the  per- 
formance as  they  had  done  in  the  former  service.  The 
knight  was  soon  aware  that  the  voices  were  no  longer 
stationary   in   the   distance,   but   approached   the   chapel 

15  and  became  louder,  when  a  door,  imperceptible  when 
closed,  like  that  by  which  he  had  himself  entered,  opened 
on  the  other  side  of  the  vault,  and  gave  the  tones  of  the 
choir  more  room  to  swell  along  the  ribbed  arches  of  the 
roof. 

20  The  knight  fixed  his  eyes  on  the  opening  with  breathless 
anxiety,  and,  continuing  to  kneel  in  the  attitude  of  devotion 
which  the  place  and  scene  required,  expected  the  conse- 
quence of  these  preparations.  A  procession  appeared 
about  to  issue  from  the  door.     First,  four  beautiful  boys, 

25  whose  arms,  neck,  and  legs  were  bare,  showing  the  bronze 
complexion  of  the  East,  and  contrasting  with  the  snow- 
white  tunics  which  they  wore,  entered  the  chapel  two  by 
two.  The  first  pair  bore  censers,  which  they  swung  from 
side  to  side,  adding  double  fragrance  to  the  odors  with 

30  which  the  chapel  already  was  impregnated.  The  second 
pair  scattered  flowers. 

After  these  followed,  in  due  and  majestic  order,  the 
females  who  composed  the  choir — six  who,  from  their 
black  scapularies  and  black  veils  over  their  white  garments, 


266  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

appeared  to  be  professed  nuns  of  the  order  of  Mount 
Carmel,  and  as  many  whose  veils,  being  white,  argued 
them  to  be  novices,  or  occasional  inhabitants  in  the 
cloister,  who  were  not  as  yet  bound  to  it  by  vows.  The 
former  held  in  their  hands  large  rosaries,  while  the  younger  5 
and  lighter  figures  who  followed  carried  each  a  chaplet 
of  red  and  white  roses.  They  moved  in  procession  around 
the  chapel  without  appearing  to  take  the  slightest  notice 
of  Kenneth,  although  passing  so  near  him  that  their  robes 
almost  touched  him;  while  they  continued  to  sing,  the  10 
knight  doubted  not  that  he  was  in  one  of  those  cloisters 
where  the  noble  Christian  maidens  had  formerly  openly 
devoted  themselves  to  the  services  of  the  church.  Most 
of  them  had  been  suppressed  since  the  Mahometans  had 
reconquered  Palestine,  but  many,  purchasing  connivance  15 
by  presents,  or  receiving  it  from  the  clemency  or  contempt 
of  the  victors,  still  continued  to  observe  in  private  the 
ritual  to  which  their  vows  had  consecrated  them.  Yet, 
though  Kenneth  knew  this  to  be  the  case,  the  solemnity 
of  the  place  and  hour,  the  surprise  at  the  sudden  ap-  20 
pearance  of  these  votresses,  and  the  visionary  manner  in 
which  they  moved  past  him,  had  such  influence  on  his 
imagination,  that  he  could  scarce  conceive  that  the  fair 
procession  which  he  beheld  was  formed  of  creatures  of 
this  world,  so  much  did  they  resemble  a  choir  of  super-  25 
natural  beings  rendering  homage  to  the  universal  object 
of  adoration. 

Such  was  the  knight's  first  idea,  as  the  procession  passed 
him,  scarce  moving,  save  just  sufficiently  to  continue 
their  progress;  so  that,  seen  by  the  shadowy  and  religious  30 
light  which  the  lamps  shed  through  the  clouds  of  incense 
which  darkened  the  apartment,  they  appeared  rather  to 
glide  than  to  walk. 

But  as  a  second  time,  in  surrounding  the  chapel,  they 


DESCRIPTION  267 

passed  the  spot  on  which  he  kneeled,  one  of  the  white- 
stoled  maidens,  as  she  ghded  by  him,  detached  from  the 
chaplet  which  she  carried  a  rosebud,  which  dropped  from 
her  fingers,  perhaps  unconsciously,  at  the  foot  of  Sir 
5  Kenneth. 

Suggestions:  Here  again,  we  have  a  changing  point  of 
view  very  convincingly  maintained.  Perhaps  the  best  char- 
acteristic of  the  description  is  the  manner  in  which  the  lighted 
chapel  is  made  to  impress  the  knight,  who  has  just  entered  from 
the  dark  stairway.  What  things  does  he  see  first? — What, 
later.?  Imitate  this  effect,  as  far  as  possible,  in  your  own  de- 
scription. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Interiors: — 

A    church.  A    gymnasium. 

A    theatre.  A  library  reading-room. 

A  lecture  hall.  A    commencement. 

A  church  service  on  Easter  Sunday. 


ST.  MARK'S* 

John  Ruskin 

AND  now  I  wish  that  the  reader,  before  I  bring  him 
into  St.  Mark's  Place,  would  imagine  himself  for  a 
little  time  in  a  quiet  English  cathedral  town,  and  walk 
with  me  to  the  west  front  of  its  cathedral.  Let  us  go 
10  together  up  the  more  retired  street,  at  the  end  of  which 
we  can  see  the  pinnacles  of  one  of  the  towers,  and  then 
through  the  low,  gray  gateway  with  its  battlemented  top 
and  small  latticed  window  in  the  center,  into  the  inner 
*  Stones  of  Venice. 


268  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

private-looking  road  or  close,  where  nothing  goes  in  but 
the  carts  of  the  tradesmen  who  supply  the  bishop  and  the 
chapter,  and  where  there  are  little  shaven  grassplots, 
fenced  in  by  neat  rails,  before  old-fashioned  groups  of 
somewhat  diminutive  and  excessively  trim  houses,  with  5 
little  oriel  and  bay  windows  jutting  out  here  and  there, 
and  deep  wooden  cornices  and  eaves  painted  cream  color 
and  white,  and  small  porches  to  their  doors  in  the  shape 
of  cockleshells,  or  little,  crooked,  thick,  indescribable, 
wooden  gables  warped  a  little  on  one  side;  and  so  forward  10 
till  we  come  to  larger  houses,  also  old-fashioned,  but  of 
red  brick,  and  with  gardens  behind  them,  and  fruit  walls, 
which  show  here  and  there,  among  the  nectarines,  the 
vestiges  of  an  old  cloister  arch  or  shaft;  and  looking  in 
front  on  the  cathedral  square  itself,  laid  out  in  rigid  15 
divisions  of  smooth  grass  and  gravel  walk,  yet  not  un- 
cheerful,  especially  on  the  sunny  side,  where  the  canons' 
children  are  walking  with  their  nurserymaids.  And  so, 
taking  care  not  to  tread  on  the  grass,  we  will  go  along  the 
straight  walk  to  the  west  front,  and  there  stand  for  a  20 
time,  looking  up  at  its  deep-pointed  porches  and  the  dark 
places  between  their  pillars  where  there  were  statues  once, 
and  where  the  fragments,  here  and  there,  of  a  stately 
figure  are  still  left,  which  has  in  it  the  likeness  of  a  king, 
perhaps  indeed  a  king  on  earth,  perhaps  a  saintly  king  25 
long  ago  in  heaven;  and  so  higher  and  higher  up  to  the 
great  mouldering  wall  of  rugged  sculpture  and  confused 
arcades,  shattered,  and  gray,  and  grisly  with  heads  of 
dragons  and  mocking  fiends,  worn  by  the  rain  and  swirling 
winds  into  yet  unseemlier  shape,  and  colored  on  their  30 
stony  scales  by  the  deep  russet-orange  lichen,  melancholy 
gold;  and  so,  higher  still,  to  the  bleak  towers,  so  far  above 
that  the  eye  loses  itself  among  the  bosses  of  their  traceries, 
though  they  are  rude  and  strong,  and  only  sees,  like  a 


DESCRIPTION  269 

drift  of  eddying  black  points,  now  closing,  now  scattering, 
and  now  settling  suddenly  into  invisible  places  among  the 
bosses  and  flowers,  the  crowd  of  restless  birds  that  fill  the 
whole  square  with  that  strange  clangor  of  theirs,  so  harsh 
5  and  yet  so  soothing,  like  the  cries  of  birds  on  a  solitary 
coast  between  the  cliffs  and  sea. 

Think  for  a  little  while  of  that  scene,  and  the  meaning 
of  all  its  small  formalisms,  mixed  with  its  serene  sublimity. 
Estimate  its  secluded,  continuous,  drowsy  felicities,  and  its 

10  evidence  of  the  sense  and  steady  performance  of  such 
kind  of  duties  as  can  be  regulated  by  the  cathedral  clock; 
and  weigh  the  influence  of  those  dark  towers  on  all  who 
have  passed  through  the  lonely  square  at  their  feet  for 
centuries,  and  on  all  who  have  seen  them  rising  far  away 

15  over  the  wooded  plain,  or  catching  on  their  square  masses 
the  last  rays  of  the  sunset,  when  the  city  at  their  feet  was 
indicated  only  by  the  mist  at  the  bend  of  the  river.  And 
then  let  us  quickly  recollect  that  we  are  in  Venice,  and 
land  at  the  extremity  of  the  Calle  Lunga  San  Moise, 

20  which  may  be  considered  as  there  answering  to  the  secluded 
street  that  led  us  to  our  English  cathedral  gateway. 

We  find  ourselves  in  a  paved  alley,  some  seven  feet 
wide  where  it  is  widest,  full  of  people,  and  resonant  with 
cries  of  itinerant  salesmen, — a  shriek  in  their  beginning, 

25  and  dying  away  into  a  kind  of  brazen  ringing,  all  the 
worse  for  its  confinement  between  the  high  houses  of  the 
passage  along  which  we  have  to  make  our  way.  Over- 
head, an  inextricable  confusion  of  rugged  shutters,  and 
iron  balconies,  and  chimney  flues,  pushed  out  on  brackets 

30  to  save  room,  and  arched  windows  with  projecting  sills 
of  Istrian  stone,  and  gleams  of  green  leaves  here  and 
there,  where  a  fig-tree  branch  escapes  over  a  lower  wall 
from  some  inner  cortile,  leading  the  eye  up  to  the  narrow 
stream  of  blue  sky  high  over  all.     On  each  side,  a  row 


270  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

of  shops,  as  densely  set  as  may  be,  occupying,  in  fact, 
intervals  between  the  square  stone  shafts,  about  eight 
feet  high,  which  carry  the  first  floors:  intervals  of  which 
one  is  narrow  and  serves  as  a  door;  the  other  is,  in  the 
more  respectable  shops,  wainscoted  to  the  height  of  the  5 
counter  and  glazed  above,  but  in  those  of  the  poorer 
tradesmen  left  open  to  the  ground,  and  the  wares  laid  on 
benches  and  tables  in  the  open  air,  the  light  in  all  cases 
entering  at  the  front  only,  and  fading  away  in  a  few  feet 
from  the  threshold  into  a  gloom  which  the  eye  from  with-  10 
out  cannot  penetrate,  but  which  is  generally  broken  by 
a  ray  or  two  from  a  feeble  lamp  at  the  back  of  the  shop, 
suspended  before  a  print  of  the  Virgin.  The  less  pious 
shopkeeper  sometimes  leaves  his  lamp  unlighted,  and  is 
contented  with  a  penny  print;  the  more  religious  one  has  15 
his  print  colored  and  set  in  a  little  shrine  with  a  gilded 
or  figured  fringe,  with  perhaps  a  faded  flower  or  two  on 
each  side,  and  his  lamp  burning  brilliantly.  Here,  at 
the  fruiterer's,  where  the  dark-green  watermelons  are 
heaped  upon  the  counter  like  cannon-balls,  the  Madonna  20 
has  a  tabernacle  of  fresh  laurel  leaves;  but  the  pewterer 
next  door  has  let  his  lamp  out,  and  there  is  nothing  to  be 
seen  in  his  shop  but  the  dull  gleam  of  the  studded  patterns 
on  the  copper  pans,  hanging  from  his  roof  in  the  darkness. 
Next  comes  a  "Vendita  Frittole  e  Liquori,"  where  the  25 
Virgin,  enthroned  in  a  very  humble  manner  beside  a  tallow 
candle  on  a  back  shelf,  presides  over  certain  ambrosial 
morsels  of  a  nature  too  ambiguous  to  be  defined  or  enu- 
merated. But,  a  few  steps  farther  on,  at  the  regular 
wine-shop  of  the  calle,  where  we  are  offered  "  Vino  Nostrani  30 
a  Soldi  28-2^, "  the  Madonna  is  in  great  glory,  enthroned 
above  ten  or  a  dozen  large  red  casks  of  three-year-old 
vintage,  and  flanked  by  goodly  ranks  of  bottles  of  Mara- 
schino, and  two  crimson  lam  ps;  and  for  the  evening,  when 


DESCRIPTION  271 

the  gondoliers  will  come  to  drink  out,  under  her  auspices, 
the  money  they  have  gained  during  the  day,  she  will  have 
a  whole  chandelier. 

A  yard  or  two  farther,  we  pass  the  hostelry  of  the  Black 

5  Eagle,  and  glancing  as  we  pass  through  the  square  door 
of  marble,  deeply  moulded,  in  the  outer  wall,  we  see  the 
shadows  of  its  pergola  of  vines  resting  on  an  ancient  well, 
with  a  pointed  shield  carved  on  its  side;  and  so  presently 
emerge  on  the  bridge  and  Campo  San  Moise,  whence  to 

10  the  entrance  into  St.  Mark's  Place,  called  the  Bocca  di 
Piazza  (mouth  of  the  square),  the  Venetian  character 
is  nearly  destroyed,  first  by  the  frightful  fa9ade  of  San 
Moise,  which  we  will  pause  at  another  time  to  examine 
and  then  by  the  modernizing  of  the  shops  as  they  near  the 

15  piazza,  and  the  mingling  with  the  lower  Venetian  populace 
of  lounging  groups  of  English  and  Austrians.  We  will 
push  fast  through  them  into  the  shadow  of  the  pillars  at 
the  end  of  the  "Bocca  di  Piazza,"  and  then  we  forget 
them  all;  for  between  those  pillars  there  opens  a  great 

20  light,  and,  in  the  midst  of  it,  as  we  advance  slowly,  the 
vast  tower  of  St.  Mark  seems  to  lift  itself  visibly  forth 
from  the  level  field  of  checkered  stones :  and,  on  each  side, 
the  countless  arches  prolong  themselves  into  ranged  sym- 
metry, as  if  the  rugged  and  irregular  houses  that  pressed 

25  together  above  us  in  the  dark  alley  had  been  struck  back 
into  sudden  obedience  and  lovely  order,  and  all  their  rude 
casements  and  broken  walls  had  been  transformed  into 
arches  charged  with  goodly  sculpture,  and  fluted  shafts 
of  delicate  stone. 

30  And  well  may  they  fall  back,  for  beyond  those  troops 
of  ordered  arches  there  rises  a  vision  out  of  the  earth,  and 
all  the  great  square  seems  to  have  opened  from  it  in  a 
kind  of  awe,  that  we  may  see  it  far  away; — a  multitude  of 
pillars  and  white  domes,  clustered  into  a  long  low  pyramid 


^7^  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

of  colored  light;  a  treasure-heap  it  seems,  partly  of  gold 
and  partly  of  opal  and  mother-of-pearl,  hollowed  beneath 
into  five  great  vaulted  porches,  ceiled  with  fair  mosaic 
and  beset  with  sculpture  of  alabaster,  clear  as  amber  and 
delicate  as  ivory, — sculpture  fantastic  and  involved,  of  5 
palm-leaves  and  lilies,  and  grapes  and  pomegranates, 
and  birds  clinging  and  fluttering  among  the  branches,  all 
twined  together  into  an  endless  network  of  buds  and 
plumes;  and,  in  the  midst  of  it,  the  solemn  forms  of  angels, 
sceptred,  and  robed  to  the  feet,  and  leaning  to  each  other  10 
across  the  gates,  their  figures  indistinct  among  the  gleaming 
of  the  golden  ground  through  the  leaves  beside  them, 
interrupted  and  dim,  like  the  morning  light  as  it  faded 
back  among  the  branches  of  Eden,  when  first  its  gates 
were  angel-guarded  long  ago.  Around  the  walls  of  the  13 
porches  there  are  set  pillars  of  variegated  stones,  jasper 
and  porphyry,  and  deep-green  serpentine  spotted  with 
flakes  of  snow,  and  marbles,  that  half  refuse  and  half 
yield  to  the  sunshine,  Cleopatra-like,  **  their  bluest  veins 
to  kiss," — the  shadow,  as  it  steals  back  from  them,  re-  20 
vealing  line  after  line  of  azure  undulation,  as  a  receding 
tide  leaves  the  waved  sand;  their  capitals  rich  with  in- 
terwoven tracery,  rooted  knots  of  herbage,  and  drifting 
leaves  of  acanthus  and  vine,  and  mystical  signs,  all  be- 
ginning and  ending  in  the  Cross;  and  above  them,  in  the  25 
broad  archivolts,  a  continuous  chain  of  language  and  of 
life — angels,  and  the  signs  of  heaven,  and  the  labors  of 
men,  each  in  its  appointed  season  upon  the  earth;  and 
above  these,  another  range  of  glittering  pinnacles,  mixed 
with  white  arches  edged  with  scarlet  flowers, — a  confusion  iiO 
of  delight,  amidst  which  the  breasts  of  the  Greek  horses 
are  seen  blazing  in  their  breadth  of  golden  strength,  and 
the  St.  Mark's  lion,  lifted  on  a  blue  field  covered  with 
stars,  until,  at  last,  as  if  in  ecstasy,  the  crests  of  the  arches 


DESCRIPTION  «73 

break  into  a  marble  foam,  and  toss  themselves  far  into 
the  blue  sky  in  flashes  and  wreaths  of  sculptured  spray, 
as  if  the  breakers  on  the  Lido  shore  had  been  frost-bound 
before  they  fell,  and  the  sea-nymphs  had  inlaid  them  with 
5  coral  and  amethyst. 

Between  that  grim  cathedral  of  England  and  this,  what 
an  interval!  There  is  a  type  of  it  in  the  very  birds  that 
haunt  them;  for,  instead  of  the  restless  crowd,  hoarse 
voiced  and  sable-winged,  drifting  on  the  bleak  upper  air, 

10  the  St.  Mark's  porches  are  full  of  doves,  that  nestle  among 
the  marble  foliage,  and  mingle  the  soft  iridescence  of  their 
living  plumes,  changing  at  every  motion,  with  the  tints, 
hardly  less  lovely,  that  have  stood  unchanged  for  seven 
hundred  years. 

15  And  what  effect  has  this  splendor  on  those  who  pass 
beneath  it  ?  You  may  walk  from  sunrise  to  sunset,  to  and 
fro,  before  the  gateway  of  St. Mark's,  and  you  will  not  see 
an  eye  lifted  to  it,  nor  a  countenance  brightened  by  it. 
Priest  and  layman,  soldier  and  civilian,  rich  and  poor, 

20  pass  by  it  alike  regardlessly.  Up  to  the  very  recesses  of 
the  porches,  the  meanest  tradesmen  of  the  city  push  their 
counters ;  nay,  the  foundations  of  its  pillars  are  themselves 
the  seats — not  "of  them  that  sell  doves"  for  sacrifice,  but 
of  the  vendors  of  toys  and  caricatures.     Round  the  whole 

25  square  in  front  of  the  church  there  is  almost  a  continuous 
line  of  cafes,  where  the  idle  Venetians  of  the  middle  classes 
lounge,  and  read  empty  journals ;  in  its  center  the  Austrian 
bands  play  during  the  time  of  vespers,  their  martial  music 
jarring  with  the  organ  notes, — the  march  drowning  the 

30  Miserere,  and  the  sullen  crowd  thickening  round  them, — 
a  crowd  which,  if  it  had  its  will,  would  stiletto  every  soldier 
that  pipes  to  it.  And  in  the  recesses  of  the  porches,  all 
day  long,  knots  of  men  of  the  lowest  classes,  unemployed 
and  listless,  lie  basking  in  the  sun  like  lizards;  and  unre- 


274  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

garded  children, — every  heavy  glance  of  their  young  eyes 
full  of  desperation  and  stony  depravity,  and  their  throats 
hoarse  with  cursing, — ^gamble,  and  fight,  and  snarl,  and 
sleep,  hour  after  hour,  clashing  their  bruised  centesimi 
upon  the  marble  ledges  of  the  church  porch.  And  the  5 
images  of  Christ  and  His  angels  look  down  upon  it  con- 
tinually. 

That  we  may  not  enter  the  church  out  of  the  midst  of 
the  horror  of  this,  let  us  turn  aside  under  the  portico  which 
looks  toward  the  sea,  and  passing  round  within  the  two  10 
massive  pillars  brought  from  St.  Jean  d'Acre,  we  shall 
find  the  gate  of  the  Baptistery;  let  us  enter  there.  The 
heavy  door  closes  behind  us  instantly,  and  the  light  and 
the  turbulence  of  the  Piazzetta  are  together  shut  out  by  it. 

We  are  in  a  low  vaulted  room;  vaulted,  not  with  arches,  15 
but  with  small  cupolas  starred  with  gold,  and  checkered 
with  gloomy  figures:  in  the  center  is  a  bronze  font  charged 
with  rich  bas-reliefs,  a  small  figure  of  the  Baptist  standing 
above  it  in  a  single  ray  of  light  that  glances  across  the 
narrow  room,  dying  as  it  falls  from  a  window  high  in  the  20 
wall,  and  the  first  thing  that  strikes,  and  the  only  thing 
that  it  strikes  brightly,  is  a  tomb.  We  hardly  know  if  it 
be  a  tomb  indeed;  for  it  is  like  a  narrow  couch  set  beside 
the  window,  low- roofed  and  curtained,  so  that  it  might 
seem,  but  that  it  is  some  height  above  the  pavement,  to  25 
have  been  drawn  toward  the  window,  that  the  sleeper 
might  be  wakened  early;  only  there  are  two  angels  who 
have  drawn  the  curtain  back,  and  are  looking  down  upon 
him.  Let  us  look  also,  and  thank  that  gentle  light  that 
rests  upon  his  forehead  for  ever,  and  dies  away  upon 
his  breast.  ^ 

The  face  is  of  a  man,  in  middle  life,  but  there  are  two 
deep  furrows  right  across  the  forehead,  dividing  it  like 
the  foundations  of  a  tower;  the  height  of  it  above  is  bound 


DESCRIPTION  275 

by  the  fillet  of  the  ducal  cap.  The  rest  of  the  features 
are  singularly  small  and  delicate,  the  lips  sharp,  perhaps 
the  sharpness  of  death  being  added  to  that  of  the  natural 
lines;  but  there  is  a  sweet  smile  upon  them,  and  a  deep 
5  serenity  upon  the  whole  countenance.  The  roof  of  the 
canopy  above  has  been  blue,  filled  with  stars;  beneath, 
in  the  center  of  the  tomb  on  which  the  figure  rests,  is  a 
seated  figure  of  the  Virgin,  and  the  border  of  it  all  around 
is  of  flowers  and  soft  leaves,  growing  rich  and  deep,  as  if 

10  in  a  field  in  summer. 

It  is  the  Doge  Andrea  Dandolo,  a  man  early  great 
among  the  great  of  Venice;  and  early  lost.  She  chose 
him  for  her  king  in  his  thirty-sixth  year;  he  died  ten  years 
later,  leaving  behind  him  that  history  to  which  we  owe 

15  half  of  what  we  know  of  her  former  fortunes. 

Look  round  at  the  room  in  which  he  lies.  The  floor 
of  it  is  of  rich  mosaic,  encompassed  by  a  low  seat  of  red 
marble,  and  its  walls  are  of  alabaster,  but  worn  and 
shattered,  and  darkly  stained  with  age,  almost  a  ruin,— in 

20  places  the  slabs  of  marble  have  fallen  away  altogether, 
and  the  rugged  brickwork  is  seen  through  the  rents,  but 
all  beautiful;  the  ravaging  fissures  fretting  their  way 
among  the  islands  and  channelled  zones  of  the  alabaster, 
and  the  time-stains  on  its  translucent  masses  darkened 

25  into  fields  of  rich  golden  brown,  like  the  color  of  seaweed 
when  the  sun  strikes  on  it  through  deep  sea.  The  light 
fades  away  into  the  recess  of  the  chamber  toward  the 
altar,  and  the  eye  can  hardly  trace  the  lines  of  the  bas-relief 
behind  it  of  the  baptism  of  Christ:  but  on  the  vaulting  of 

30  the  roof  the  figures  are  distinct,  and  there  are  seen  upon  it 

two  great  circles,  one  surrounded  by  the  "Principalities 

and  powers  in  heavenly  places,"  of  which  Milton  has 

expressed  the  ancient  division  in  the  single  massy  line, 

"Thrones,  Dominations,  Princedoms,  Virtues,  Powers," 


276  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  around  the  other,  the  Apostles;  Christ  the  center  of 
both:  and  upon  the  walls,  again  and  again  repeated,  the 
gaunt  figure  of  the  Baptist,  in  every  circumstance  of  his 
life  and  death;  and  the  streams  of  the  Jordan  running 
down  between  their  cloven  rocks;  the  axe  laid  to  the  root  5 
of  a  fruitless  tree  that  springs  upon  their  shore.  "Every 
tree  that  bringeth  not  forth  good  fruit  shall  be  hewn  down, 
and  cast  into  the  fire."  Yes,  verily:  to  be  baptized  with 
fire,  or  to  be  cast  therein ;  it  is  the  choice  set  before  all  men. 
The  march-notes  still  murmur  through  the  grated  window,  10 
and  mingle  with  the  sounding  in  our  ears  of  the  sentence 
of  judgment,  which  the  old  Greek  has  written  on  that 
Baptistery  wall.     Venice  has  made  her  choice. 

He  who  lies  under  that  stony  canopy  would  have  taught 
her  another  choice,  in  his  day,  if  she  would  have  listened   15 
to  him;  but  he  and  his  counsels  have  long  been  forgotten 
by  her,  and  the  dust  lies  upon  his  lips. 

Through  the  heavy  door  whose  bronze  net-work  closes 
the  place  of  his  rest,  let  us  enter  the  church  itself.  It  is 
lost  in  still  deeper  twilight,  to  which  the  eye  must  be  ac-  20 
customed  for  some  moments  before  the  form  of  the  building 
can  be  traced;  and  then  there  opens  before  us  a  vast  cave, 
hewn  out  into  the  form  of  a  Cross,  and  divided  into  shadowy 
aisles  by  many  pillars.  Round  the  domes  of  its  roof  the 
light  enters  only  through  narrow  apertures  like  large  stars;  25 
and  here  and  there  a  ray  or  two  from  some  far-away 
casement  wanders  into  the  darkness,  and  casts  a  narrow 
phosphoric  stream  upon  the  waves  of  marble  that  heave 
and  fall  in  a  thousand  colors  along  the  floor.  What  else 
there  is  of  light  is  from  torches,  or  silver  lamps,  burning  30 
ceaselessly  in  the  recesses  of  the  chapels;  the  roof  sheeted 
with  gold,  and  the  polished  walls  co veered  with  alabaster, 
give  back  at  every  curve  and  angle  some  feeble  gleaming 
to  the  flames;  and  the  glories  round  the  heads  of  the  sculp- 


DESCRIPTION  277 

tured  saints  flash  out  upon  us  as  we  pass  them,  and  sink 
again  into  the  gloom.  Under  foot  and  over  head,  a  con- 
tinual succession  of  crowded  imagery,  one  picture  passing 
into  another,  as  in  a  dream;  forms  beautiful  and  terrible 

5  mixed  together;  dragons  and  serpents,  and  ravening 
beasts  of  prey,  and  graceful  birds  that  in  the  midst  of 
them  drink  from  running  fountains  and  feed  from  vases  of 
crystal;  the  passions  and  the  pleasures  of  human  life 
symbolized  together,  and  the  mystery  of  its  redemption; 

10  for  the  mazes  of  interwoven  lines  and  changeful  pictures 
lead  always  at  last  to  the  Cross,  lifted  and  carved  in  every 
place  and  upon  every  stone;  sometimes  with  the  serpent 
of  eternity  wrapt  round  it,  sometimes  with  doves  beneath 
its  arms,  and  sweet  herbage  growing  forth  from  its  feet; 

15  but  conspicuous  most  of  all  on  the  great  rood  that  crosses 
the  church  before  the  altar,  raised  in  bright  blazonry 
against  the  shadow  of  the  apse.  And  although  in  the 
recesses  of  the  aisles  and  chapels,  when  the  mist  of  the 
incense  hangs  heavily,  we  may  see  continually  a  figure 

20  traced  in  faint  lines  upon  their  marble,  a  woman  standing 
with  her  eyes  raised  to  heaven,  and  the  inscription  above 
her,  "Mother  of  God,"  she  is  not  here  the  presiding  deity. 
It  is  the  Cross  that  is  first  seen,  and  always  burning  in  the 
center  of  the  temple;  and  every  dome  and  hollow  of  its 

25  roof  has  the  figure  of  Christ  in  the  utmost  height  of  it, 
raised  in  power,  or  returning  in  judgment. 

Nor  is  this  interior  without  effect  on  the  minds  of  the 
people.  At  every  hour  of  the  day  there  are  groups  col- 
lected before  the  various  shrines,  and  solitary  worshippers 

30  scattered  through  the  darker  places  of  the  church,  evi- 
dently in  prayer  both  deep  and  reverent,  and,  for  the  most 
part,  profoundly  sorrowful.  The  devotees  at  the  greater 
number  of  the  renowned  shrines  of  Romanism  may  be 
seen  murmuring  their  appointed  prayers  with  wandering 


278  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

eyes  and  unengaged  gestures;  but  the  step  of  the  stranger 
does  not  disturb  those  who  kneel  on  the  pavement  of  St. 
Mark's;  and  hardly  a  moment  passes,  from  early  morning 
to  sunset,  in  which  we  may  not  see  some  half-veiled  figure 
enter  beneath  the  Arabian  porch,  cast  itself  into  long  5 
abasement  on  the  floor  of  the  temple,  and  then  rising 
slowly  with  more  confirmed  step,  and  with  a  passionate 
kiss  and  clasp  of  the  arms  given  to  the  feet  of  the  crucifix, 
by  which  the  lamps  burn  always  in  the  northern  aisle, 
leave  the  church,  as  if  comforted.  10 

Suggestions:  Very  little  comment  is  needed  upon  this  famous 
and  beautiful  description.  For  an  admirably  clear  point  of 
view,  and  for  the  employment  of  most  effective  comparisons, 
it  may  not  easily  be  surpassed.  Especially  noteworthy  are 
the  means  by  which  the  appearance  of  the  whole  cathedral  is 
suggested  at  once,  first  the  exterior,  and  later  the  interior. 

Ruskin's  words  should  be  carefully  studied  both  as  to  charac- 
ter and  variety. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

(See  lists  under  Avenel  Castle  and  The   Chapel  at  Engaddi.) 


THE  ENGLISH  LAKE  COUNTRY* 

William  Wordsworth 

AT  Lucerne,  in  Switzerland,  is  shown  a  model  of  the 
Alpine  country  which  encompasses  the  lake  of  the 
four  Cantons.  The  spectator  ascends  a  little  platform, 
and  sees  mountains,  lakes,  glaciers,  rivers,  woods,  water- 
falls, and  valleys,  with  their  cottages,  and  every  other  object 
contained  in  them,  lying  at  his  feet;  all  things  being  re-  15 
presented  in  their  appropriate  colors.  It  may  be  easily 
♦From  Guide  to  the  Lakes»   1835.    Section  first. 


DESCRIPTION  279 

conceived  that  this  exhibition  affords  an  exquisite  delight 
to  the  imagination,  tempting  it  to  wander  at  will  from 
valley  to  valley,  from  mountain  to  mountain,  through  the 
deepest  recesses  of  the  Alps.     But  it  supplies  also  a  more 

5  substantial  pleasure:  for  the  sublime  and  beautiful  region, 
with  all  its  hidden  treasures,  and  their  bearings  and 
relations  to  each  other,  is  thereby  comprehended  and 
understood  at  once. 

Something  of  this  kind,  without  touching  upon  minute 

10  details  and  individualities  which  would  only  confuse  and 
embarrass,  will  here  be  attempted,  in  respect  to  the  lakes 
in  the  North  of  England,  and  the  vales  and  mountains 
enclosing  and  surrounding  them.  The  delineation,  if 
tolerably  executed,  will,  in  some  instances,  communicate 

15  to  the  traveler,  who  has  already  seen  the  objects,  new 
information;  and  will  assist  in  giving  to  his  recollections 
a  more  orderly  arrangement  than  his  own  opportunities 
of  observing  may  have  permitted  him  to  make;  while  it 
will  be  still  more  useful  to  the  future  traveler,  by  directing 

20  his  attention  at  once  to  distinctions  in  things,  which, 
without  such  previous  aid,  a  length  of  time  only  could 
enable  him  to  discover.  It  is  hoped,  also,  that  this  essay 
may  become  generally  serviceable,  by  leading  to  habits 
of  more  exact  and  considerate  observation  than,  as  far  as 

25  the  writer  knows,  have  hitherto  been  applied  to  local 
scenery. 

To  begin,  then,  with  the  main  outlines  of  the  country: 
I  know  not  how  to  give  the  reader  a  distinct  image  of  these 
more  readily,  than  by  requesting  him  to  place  himself 

30  with  me,  in  imagination,  upon  some  given  point;  let  it  be 
the  top  of  either  of  the  mountains,  Great  Gavel,  or  Scawfell; 
or,  rather,  let  us  suppose  our  station  to  be  a  cloud  hanging 
midway  between  those  two  mountains,  at  not  more  than 
half  a  mile's  distance  from  the  summit  of  each,  and  not 


280  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

many  yards  above  their  highest  elevation;  we  shall  then 
see  stretched  at  our  feet  a  number  of  valleys,  not  fewer 
than  eight,  diverging  from  the  point,  on  which  we  are 
supposed  to  stand,  like  spokes  from  the  nave  of  a  wheel. 
First,  we  note,  lying  to  the  southeast,  the  vale  of  Langdale,*  5 
which  will  conduct  the  eye  to  the  long  lake  of  Winander- 
mere,  stretched  nearly  to  the  sea;  or  rather  to  the  sands  of 
the  vast  bay  of  Morcamb,  serving  here  for  the  rim  of  this 
imaginary  wheel; — let  us  trace  it  in  a  direction  from  the 
southeast  toward  the  south,  and  we  shall  next  fix  our  eyes  10 
upon  the  vale  of  Coniston,  running  up  likewise  from  the 
sea,  but  not  (as  all  the  other  valleys  do)  to  the  nave  of  the 
wheel,  and  therefore  it  may  be  not  inaptly  represented 
as  a  broken  spoke  sticking  in  the  rim.  Looking  forth  again 
with  an  inclination  toward  the  west,  we  see  immediately  15 
at  our  feet  the  vale  of  Duddon,  in  which  is  no  lake,  but 
a  copious  stream  winding  among  fields,  rocks,  and  moun- 
tains, and  terminating  its  course  in  the  sands  of  Duddon. 
The  fourth  vale,  next  to  be  observed,  viz.,  that  of  the  Esk, 
is  of  the  same  general  character  as  the  last,  yet  beautifully  20 
discriminated  from  it  by  peculiar  features.  Its  stream 
])asses  under  the  woody  steep  upon  which  stands  Mun- 
caster  Castle,  the  ancient  seat  of  the  Penningtons,  and 
after  forming  a  short  and  narrow  estuary  enters  the  sea 
below  the  small  town  of  Ravenglass.  Next,  almost  due  25 
west,  look  down  into,  and  along  the  deep  valley  of  Wast- 
dale,  with  its  little  chapel  and  half  a  dozen  neat  dwellings 
scattered  upon  a  plain  of  meadow  and  corn-ground  inter- 
sected with  stone  walls  apparently  innumerable,  like  a 
large  piece  of  lawless  patchwork,  or  an  array  of  mathe-  30 
matical  figures,  such  as  in  the  ancient  schools  of  geometry 

♦Anciently  spelled  Langden,  and  so  called  by  the  old  inhabitants 
to  this  day — dean,  from  which  the  latter  part  ot  the  word  is  derived, 
being  in  many  parts  of  England  a  name  for  a  valley. 


DESCRIPTION  281 

might  have  been  sportively  and  fantastically  traced  out 
upon  sand.  Beyond  this  little  fertile  plain  lies,  within  a 
bed  of  steep  mountains,  the  long,  narrow,  stern,  and 
desolate  lake  of  Wastdale;  and,  beyond  this,  a  dusky  tract 
5  of  level  ground  conducts  the  eye  to  the  Irish  Sea.  The 
stream  that  issues  from  Wast-water  is  named  the  Irt,  and 
falls  into  the  estuary  of  the  river  Esk.  Next  comes  in 
view  Ennerdale,  with  its  lake  of  bold  and  somewhat 
savage  shores.     Its  stream,  the  Ehen  or  Enna,  flowing 

10  through  a  soft  and  fertile  country,  passes  the  town  of 
Egremont,  and  the  ruins  of  the  castle, — then,  seeming 
like  the  other  rivers,  to  break  through  the  barrier  of  sand 
thrown  up  by  the  winds  on  this  tempestuous  coast,  enters 
the  Irish  Sea.     The  vale  of  Buttermere,  with  the  Jake  and 

15  village  of  that  name,  and  the  Crummock- water,  beyond, 
next  present  themselves.  We  will  follow  the  main  stream, 
the  Coker,  through  the  fertile  and  beautiful  vale  of  Lorton, 
till  it  is  lost  in  the  Derwent,  below  the  noble  ruins  of 
Cockermouth  Castle.     Lastly,  Borrowdale,  of  which  the 

20  vale  of  Keswick  is  only  a  continuation,  stretching  due 
north,  brings  us  to  a  point  nearly  opposite  to  the  vale 
of  Winandermere  with  which  we  began.  From  this  it 
will  appear,  that  the  image  of  a  wheel,  thus  far  exact,  is 
little  more  than  one  half  complete;  but  the  deficiency 

25  on  the  eastern  side  may  be  supplied  by  the  vales  of  Wythe- 
burn,  UUswater,  Haweswater,  and  the  vale  of  Grasmere 
and  Rydal;  none  of  these,  however,  run  up  to  the  central 
point  between  Great  Gavel  and  Scawfell.  From  this, 
hitherto  our  central  point,  take  a  flight  of  not  more  than 

30  four  or  five  miles  eastward  to  the  ridge  of  Helvellyn,  and 
you  will  look  down  upon  Wytheburn  and  St.  John's  Vale, 
which  are  a  branch  of  the  vale  of  Keswick;  upon  UUs- 
water, stretching  due  east: — and  not  far  beyond  to  the 
southeast  (though  from   this   point   not   visible)    lie   the 


282  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

vale  and  lake  of  Haweswater;  and  lastly,  the  vale  of 
Grasmere,  Rydal,  and  Ambleside,  brings  you  back  to 
Winandermere,  thus  completing,  though  on  the  eastern 
side  in  a  somewhat  irregular  manner,  the  representative 
figure  of  the  wheel.  5 

Such,  concisely  given,  is  the  general  topographical 
view  of  the  country  of  the  lakes  in  the  north  of  England; 
and  it  may  be  observed  that,  from  the  circumference 
to  the  center,  that  is,  from  the  sea  or  the  plain  country 
to  the  mountain  stations  specified,  there  is — in  the  several  10 
ridges  that  enclose  these  vales,  and  divide  them  from  each 
other,  I  mean  in  the  forms  and  surfaces,  first  of  the  swelling 
grounds,  next  of  the  hills  and  rocks,  and  lastly  of  the 
mountains — an  ascent  of  almost  regular  gradation,  from 
elegance  and  richness,  to  their  highest  point  of  grandeur  and  15 
sublimity.  It  follows  therefore  from  this,  first,  that  these 
rocks,  hills,  and  mountains  must  present  themselves  to 
view  in  stages  rising  toward  the  central  point;  and  next, 
that  an  observer  familiar  with  the  several  vales,  must, 
from  their  various  position  in  relation  to  the  sun,  have  20 
had  before  his  eyes  every  possible  embellishment  of  beauty, 
dignity,  and  splendor,  which  light  and  shadow  can  bestow 
upon  objects  so  diversified.  For  example,  in  the  vale 
of  Winandermere,  if  the  spectator  looks  for  gentle  and 
lovely  scenes,  his  eye  is  turned  toward  the  south;  if  for  25 
grand,  toward  the  north:  in  the  vale  of  Keswick,  which 
(as  hath  been  said)  lies  almost  due  north  of  this,  it  is 
directly  the  reverse.  Hence,  when  the  sun  is  setting  in 
summer  far  to  the  northwest,  it  is  seen,  by  the  spectator 
from  the  shores  or  breast  of  Winandermere,  resting  among  30 
the  summits  of  the  loftiest  mountains,  some  of  which  will 
perhaps  be  half  or  wholly  hidden  by  clouds,  or  by  the 
blaze  of  light  which  the  orb  diffuses  around  it;  and  the 
surface  of  the  lake  will  reflect  before  the  eye  correspondent 


DESCRIPTION  283 

colors  through  every  variety  of  beauty,  and  through  all 
degrees  of  splendor.  In  the  vale  of  Keswick,  at  the  same 
period,  the  sun  sets  over  the  humbler  regions  of  the  land- 
scape, and  showers  down  upon  tliem  the  radiance  which 
5  at  once  veils  and  glorifies, — sending  forth,  meanwhile, 
broad  streams  of  rosy,  crimson,  purple,  or  golden  light, 
toward  the  grand  mountains  in  the  south  and  southeast, 
which,  thus  illuminated,  with  all  their  projections  and 
cavities,  and  with  an  intermixture  of  solemn  shadows,  are 

10  seen  distinctly  through  a  cool  and  clear  atmosphere. 
Of  course,  there  is  as  marked  a  difference  between  the 
noontide  appearance  of  these  two  opposite  vales.  The 
bedimming  haze  that  overspreads  the  south,  and  the 
clear  atmosphere  and  determined  shadows  of  the  clouds 

15  in  the  north,  at  the  same  time  of  the  day,  are  each  seen  in 
these  several  vales,  with  a  contrast  as  striking.  The  reader 
will  easily  conceive  in  what  degree  the  intermediate  vales 
partake  of  a  kindred  variety. 

I  do  not  indeed  know  any  tract  of  country  in  which, 

20  within  so  narrow  a  compass,  may  be  found  an  equal 
variety  in  the  influences  of  light  and  shadow  upon  the 
sublime  or  beautiful  features  of  landscape;  and  it  is  owing 
to  the  combined  circumstances  to  which  the  reader's 
attention    has    been    directed.     From    a    point    between 

25  Great  Gavel  and  Scawfell,  a  shepherd  would  not  require 
more  than  an  hour  to  descend  into  any  one  of  eight  of  the 
principal  vales  by  which  he  would  be  surrounded ;  and  all 
the  others  lie  (with  the  exception  of  Haweswater)  at 
but   a  small   distance.     Yet,   though   clustered  together, 

30  every  valley  has  its  distinct  and  separate  character;  in 
some  instances,  as  if  they  had  been  formed  in  studied 
contrast  to  each  other,  and  in  others  with  the  united 
pleasing  differences  and  resemblances  of  a  sisterly  rivalship. 
This  concentration  of  interest  gives  to  the  country  a  decided 


284  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

superiority  over  the  most  attractive  districts  of  Scotland 
and  Wales,  especially  for  the  pedestrian  traveler.  In 
Scotland  and  Wales  are  found,  undoubtedly,  individual 
scenes,  which,  in  their  several  kinds,  cannot  be  excelled. 
But,  in  Scotland,  particularly,  what  long  tracts  of  desolate  5 
country  intervene!  so  that  the  traveler,  when  he  reaches 
a  spot  deservedly  of  great  celebrity,  would  find  it  difficult 
to  determine  how  much  of  his  pleasure  is  owing  to  excel- 
lence inherent  in  the  landscape  itself;  and  how  much  to  an 
instantaneous  recovery  from  an  oppression  left  upon  his  10 
spirits  by  the  barrenness  and  desolation  through  which  he 
has  passed. 

Suggestions:  The  interest  and  value  of  this  description  con- 
sist in  the  simple  yet  skillful  means  by  which  the  peculiar  contour 
of  a  large  region  is  suggested,  and  suggested  vividly,  without 
the  use  of  pictures  or  diagrams. 

Note  the  old-fashioned  quality  of  Wordsworth's  prose  style.  In 
what,  more  particularly,  does  this  consist  ?  Study  the  length  and 
cadence  of  his  sentences.  Compare  his  vocabulary  with  that  of 
Ruskin.     What  differences  do  you  find  ?     Which  do  you  prefer  ? 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

The   topography   of   my   native   county. 
The  situation  and  plan  of  my  home  town. 
Roads  and  parks  in  a  town  I  know  well. 
A   famous    region    which    I    have    visited. 


EDINBURGH  FROM  THE  CALTON  HILL 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson* 

^T'HE  east  of  New  Edinburgh  is  guarded  by  a  craggy 

J-      hill,  of  no  great  elevation,  which  the  town  embraces. 

The  old  London  road  runs  on  one  side  of  it;  while  the 

*From  Edinburgh:   Picturesque  Notes.  First  published  in  The  Port- 
folio, 1878. 


DESCRIPTION  285 

New  Approach,  leaving  it  on  the  other  hand,  completes 
the  circuit.  You  mount  by  stairs  in  a  cutting  of  the  rock 
to  find  yourself  in  a  field  of  monuments.  Dugald  Stewart 
has  the  honors  of  situation  and  architecture;  Burns  is 

5  memorialized  lower  down  upon  a  spur;  Lord  Nelson,  as 
befits  a  sailor,  gives  his  name  to  the  top-gallant  of  the 
Calton  Hill.  This  latter  erection  has  been  differently  and 
yet,  in  both  cases,  aptly  compared  to  a  telescope  and  a 
butterchurn;  comparisons    apart,    it    ranks    among    the 

10  vilest  of  men's  handiworks.  But  the  chief  feature  is  an 
unfinished  range  of  columns,  the  "Modern  Ruin"  as  it  has 
been  called,  an  imposing  object  from  far  and  near,  and 
giving  Edinburgh,  even  from  the  sea,  that  false  air  of  a 
modern  Athens  which  has  earned  for  her  so  many  slighting 

15  speeches.  It  was  meant  to  be  a  National  Monument; 
and  its  present  state  is  a  very  suitable  monument  to 
certain  national  characteristics.  The  old  Observatory, — 
a  quaint  brown  building  on  the  edge  of  the  steep, — and 
the  New  Observatory, — a  classical  edifice  with  a  dome, 

20  — occupy  the  central  portion  of  the  summit.  All  these 
are  scattered  on  a  green  turf,  browsed  over  by  some 
sheep. 

Of  all  places  for  a  view,  this  Calton  Hill  is  perhaps  the 
best;  since  you  can  see  the  Castle,  which  you  lose  from 

25  the  Castle,  and  Arthur's  Seat,  which  you  cannot  see  from 
Arthur's  Seat.  It  is  the  place  to  stroll  on  one  of  those 
days  of  sunshine  and  east  wind  which  are  so  common  in 
our  more  than  temperate  summer.  The  breeze  comes 
off  the  sea,  with  a  little  of  the  freshness,  and  that  touch 

30  of  chill,  peculiar  to  the  quarter.  .  .  It  brings  with  it  a 
faint,  floating  haze,  a  cunning  decolorizer  although 
not  thick  enough  to  obscure  outlines  near  at  hand.  But 
the  haze  lies  more  thickly  to  windward  at  the  far  end  of 
Musselburgh  Bay;   and  over  the  links  of  Aberlady  and 


286  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Berwick  Law  and  the  hump  of  the  Bass  Rock  it  assumes 
the  aspect  of  a  bank  of  thin  sea  fog. 

Immediately  underneath,  upon  the  south,  you  command 
the  yards  of  the  High  School,  and  the  towers  and  courts 
of  the  new  jail — a  large  place,  castellated  to  the  extent  5 
of  folly,  standing  by  itself  on  the  edge  of  a  steep  cliff,  and 
often  joyfully  hailed  by  tourists  as  the  Castle.  In  the  one, 
you  may  perhaps  see  female  prisoners  taking  exercise 
like  a  string  of  nuns;  in  the  other,  schoolboys  running  at 
play  and  their  shadows  keeping  step  with  them.  From  10 
the  bottom  of  the  valley,  a  gigantic  chimney  rises  almost 
to  the  level  of  the  eye,  a  taller  and  a  shapelier  edifice  than 
Nelson's  Monument.  Look  a  little  farther  and  there  is 
Holyrood  Palace,  with  its  Gothic  frontal  and  ruined  abbey, 
and  the  red  sentry  pacing  smartly  to  and  fro  before  the  15 
door  like  a  mechanical  figure  in  a  panorama.  By  way  of 
an  outpost,  you  can  single  out  the  little  peak-roofed  lodge, 
over  which  Rizzio's  murderers  made  their  escape,  and  where 
Queen  Mary  herself,  according  to  gossip,  bathed  in  white 
wine  to  entertain  her  loveliness.  Behind  and  overhead,  lie  20 
the  Queen's  Park,  from  Muschat's  Cairn  to  Dumbiedykes, 
St.  Margaret's  Loch,  and  the  long  wall  of  Salisbury  Crags; 
and  thence,  by  knoll  and  rocky  bulwark  and  precipitous 
slope,  the  eye  rises  to  the  top  of  Arthur's  Seat,  a  hill  for 
magnitude,  a  mountain  in  virtue  of  its  bold  design.  This  25 
upon  your  left.  Upon  the  right,  the  roofs  and  spires  of 
the  Old  Town  climb  one  above  another  to  where  the 
citadel  prints  its  broad  bulk  and  jagged  crown  of  bastions 
on  the  western  sky. — Perhaps  it  is  now  one  in  the  after- 
noon; and  at  the  same  instant  of  time,  a  ball  rises  to  the  30 
summit  of  Nelson's  flagstaff  close  at  hand,  and,  far  away, 
a  puff  of  smoke  followed  by  a  report  bursts  from  the  half- 
moon  battery  at  the  Castle.  This  is  the  time-gun  by  which 
people  set  their  watches,  as  far  as  the  sea  coast  or  in  hill 


DESCRIPTION  287 

farms  upon  the  Pentlands.  To  complete  the  view,  the 
eye  enfilades  Princes  Street,  black  with  traffic,  and  has  a 
broad  look  over  the  valley  between  the  Old  Town  and  the 
New:  here  full  of  railway  trains  and  stepped  over  by  the 
5  high  North  Bridge  upon  its  many  columns,  and  there, 
green  with  trees  and  gardens. 

On  the  north,  the  Calton  Hill  is  neither  so  abrupt  in 
itself  nor  has  it  so  exceptional  an  outlook;  and  yet  even 
here  it  commands  a  striking  prospect.     A  gully  separates 

10  it  from  the  New  Town.  This  is  Greenside,  where  witches 
were  burned  and  tournaments  held  in  former  days.  Down 
that  almost  precipitous  bank,  Bothwell  launched  his 
horse,  and  so  first,  as  they  say,  attracted  the  bright  eyes 
of  Mary.     It  is  now  tessellated  with  sheets  and  blankets 

15  out  to  dry,  and  the  sound  of  people  beating  carpets  is 
rarely  absent.  Beyond  all  this,  the  suburbs  run  out  to 
Leith;  Leith  camps  on  the  seaside  with  her  forest  of 
masts;  Leith  roads  are  full  of  ships  at  anchor;  the  sun 
picks  out  the  white  pharos  upon  Inchkeith  island:  the 

20  Firth  extends  on  either  hand  from  the  Ferry  to  the  May; 
the  towns  of  Fifeshire  sit,  each  in  its  bank  of  blowing 
smoke,  along  the  opposite  coast;  and  the  hills  inclose  the 
view,  except  to  the  farthest  east,  where  the  haze  of  the 
horizon  rests  upon  the  open  sea.     There  lies  the  road  to 

25  Norway:  a  dear  road  for  Sir  Patrick  Spens  and  his  Scots 
Lords;  and  yonder  smoke  on  the  hither  side  of  Largo  Law 
is  Aberdour,  from  whence  they  sailed  to  seek  a  queen 
for  Scotland. 

"O  lang,  lang,  may  the  ladies  sit, 
30  Wi'   their  fans   into   their  hand. 

Or  e'er  they  see  Sir  Patrick  Spens 
Come  sailing  to  the  land!" 

These  are  the  main  features  of  the  scene  roughly  sketched. 
How  they  are  all  tilted  by  the  inclination  of  the  ground. 


288  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

how  each  stands  out  in  delicate  relief  against  the  rest, 
what  manifold  detail,  and  play  of  sun  and  shadow,  animate 
and  accentuate  the  picture,  is  a  matter  for  a  person  on  the 
spot,  and  turning  swiftly  on  his  heels,  to  grasp  and  bind 
together  in  one  comprehensive  look.  It  is  the  character  5 
of  such  a  prospect  to  be  full  of  change  and  of  things  moving. 
The  multiplicity  embarrasses  the  eye;  and  the  mind, 
among  so  much,  suffers  itself  to  grow  absorbed  with  single 
points.  You  remark  a  tree  in  a  hedge  row,  or  follow  a 
cart  along  a  country  road.  You  turn  to  the  city,  and  see  10 
children,  dwarfed  by  distance  into  pigmies,  at  play  about 
suburban  doorsteps;  you  have  a  glimpse  upon  a  thorough- 
fare where  people  are  densely  moving;  you  note  ridge 
after  ridge  of  chimney-stacks  running  downhill  one  behind 
another,  and  church  spires  rising  bravely  from  the  sea  of  15 
roofs.  At  one  of  the  innumerable  windows,  you  watch 
a  figure  moving;  on  one  of  the  multitude  of  roofs,  you 
watch  clambering  chimney-sweeps.  The  wind  takes  a 
run  and  scatters  the  smoke;  bells  are  heard,  far  and  near, 
faint  and  loud,  to  tell  the  hour;  or  perhaps  a  bird  goes  20 
dipping  evenly  over  the  housetops,  like  a  gull  across  the 
waves.  And  here  you  are  in  the  meantime,  on  this  pastor- 
al hillside,  among  nibbling  sheep  and  looked  upon  by 
monumental  buildings. 

Return  thither  on  some  clear,  dark,  moonless  night,  25 
with  a  ring  of  frost  in  the  air,  and  only  a  star  or  two  set 
sparsely  in  the  vault  of  heaven;  and  you  will  find  a  sight 
as  stimulating  as  the  hoariest  summit  of  the  Alps.  The 
solitude  seems  perfect;  the  patient  astronomer,  flat  on  his 
back  under  the  Observatory  dome  and  spying  heaven's  30 
secrets,  is  your  only  neighbor;  and  yet  from  all  round 
you  there  comes  u[)  the  dull  hum  of  the  city,  the  tramp  of 
countless  people  marching  out  of  time,  the  rattle  of  carriages 
and  the  continuous  jingle  of  the  tramway  bells.     An  hour 


DESCRIPTION  289 

or  so  before,  the  gas  was  turned  on;  lamplighters  scoured 
the  city;  in  ever}^  house,  from  kitchen  to  attic,  the  windows 
kindled  and  gleamed  forth  into  the  dusk.  And  so  now, 
although  the  town  lies  blue  and  darkling  on  her  hills, 
5  innumerable  spots  of  the  bright  element  shine  far  and 
near  along  the  pavements  and  upon  the  high  fa9ades. 
Moving  lights  of  the  railway  pass  and  repass  below  the 
stationary  lights  upon  the  bridge.  Lights  burn  in  the 
Jail.     Lights  burn  high  up  on  the  Castle  turrets;  they 

10  burn  low  down  in  Greenside  or  along  the  Park.  They 
run  out,  one  beyond  the  other,  into  the  dark  country. 
They  walk  in  a  procession  down  to  Leith,  and  shine  singly 
far  along  Leith  pier.  Thus  the  plan  of  the  city  and  her 
suburbs  is  mapped  out  upon  the  ground  of  blackness,  as 

15  when  a  child  pricks  a  drawing  full  of  pin  holes  and  exposes 
it  before  a  candle;  not  the  darkest  night  of  winter  can 
conceal  her  high  station  and  fanciful  design ;  every  evening 
in  the  year  she  proceeds  to  illuminate  herself  in  honor 
of  her  own  beauty;  and  as  if  to  complete  the  scheme — or 

20  rather  as  if  some  prodigal  Pharaoh  were  beginning  to 
extend  to  the  adjacent  sea  and  country — half-way  over  to 
Fife,  there  is  an  outpost  of  light  upon  Inchkeith,  and  far 
to  seaward,  yet  another  on  the  May. 

And  while  you   are  looking,   across  upon  the   Castle 

25  Hill,  the  drums  and  bugles  begin  to  recall  the  scattered 
garrison;  the  air  thrills  with  the  sound;  the  bugles  sing 
aloud;  and  the  last  rising  flourish  mounts  and  melts  into 
the  darkness  like  a  star :  a  martial  swan-song,  fitly  rounding 
in  the  labors  of  the  day. 

Suggestions:  This  sketch  of  Stevenson's  is  a  strikingly 
clear  description  of  a  very  difficult  and  complex  scene.  Is 
the  point  of  view  consistently  maintained  ?  What  devices  are 
employed  to  keep  it  constantly  in  the  reader's  mind?  What 
characteristic   of    the  description    is    indicated   in   Stevenson's 


290  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

remark,  "The  picture  is  a  matter  for  a  person  on  the  spot,  and 
turning  swiftly  on  his  heels,  to  grasp  and  bind  together  in  one 
comprehensive  look."  Test  the  psychological  accuracy  of  the 
passage  immediately  following  this  sentence — the  one  begin- 
ning "It  is  the  character  of  such  a  prospect,  etc." 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Describe,  from  a  stationary  point  of  view,  a  landscape  with 
which  you  are  familiar. 

Describe  the  panorama  from  a  high  dome  or  tower. 
Describe  a  city,  from  a  point  of  view  on  a  "sky-scraper." 


EDINBURGH,  FROM  THE  BALLOON 

A.   T.   QUILLER-COUCH 

(From  Chap.  33  of  St.  Ives,*  by  Robert  Louis  Stevenson.  This  story, 
unfinished  by  Stevenson,  was  completed  by  Mr.  Quiller-Couch,  whose 
work  begins  at  Chap.  31.) 

[Note:  The  Vicomte  de  Saint- Yves,  who  is  flying  from  the  sheriffs 
oflBcers,  has  taken  refuge  in  a  balloon  which  is  about  to  ascend  from 
a  fair  at  Edinburgh.] 

I  TURNED  to  scan  the  earth  we  were  leaving — I  had 
not  guessed  how  rapidly. 

We  contemplated  it  from  the  height  of  six  hundred  feet, 
or  so  Byfield  asserted  after  consulting  his  barometer.  He 
added  that  this  was  a  mere  nothing;  the  wonder  was  that 
the  balloon  had  risen  at  all  with  one- half  the  total  folly 
of  Edinburgh  clinging  to  the  car.  I  passed  the  possible 
inaccuracy  and  certain  ill-temper  of  this  calculation. 
He  had  (he  explained)  made  jettison  of  at  least  a  hundred- 
weight of  sand  ballast.  I  could  only  hope  it  had  fallen 
on  my  cousin.  To  me,  six  hundred  feet  appeared  a  very 
respectable  eminence.     And  the  view  was  ravisliing. 

♦Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York,  1897.  pp.  37£-3,  379-80. 


DESCRIPTION  291 

The  Lunardi  mounting  through  a  stagnant  calm  in  a 
line  almost  vertical,  had  pierced  the  morning  mists,  and 
now  swam  emancipated  in  a  heaven  of  exquisite  blue. 
Below  us,  by  some  trick  of  eyesight,  the  country  had 
5  grown  concave,  its  horizons  curving  up  like  the  rim  of  a 
jshallow  bowl — a  bowl  heaped,  in  point  of  fact,  with  sea- 
fog,  but  to  our  eyes  with  a  froth  delicate  and  dazzling  as  a 
whipped  syllabub  of  snow.  Upon  it  the  traveling  shadow 
of  the  balloon  became  no  shadow  but  a  stain ;  an  amethyst 

10  (you  might  call  it)  purged  of  all  grosser  properties  than 
color  and  lucency.  At  times  thrilled  by  no  perceptible 
wind,  rather  by  the  pulse  of  the  sun's  rays,  the  froth 
shook  and  parted;  and  then  behold,  deep  in  the  crevasses^ 
vignetted  and  shining,   an  acre  or  two  of  the  earth  of 

15  man's  business  and  fret — tilled  slopes  of  the  Lothians, 
ships  dotted  on  the  Forth,  the  capital  like  a  hive  that  some 
child  had  smoked — the  ear  of  fancy  could  almost  hear  it 
buzzing. 

I  snatched  the  glass  from  Byfield,  and  brought  it  to 

20  focus  upon  one  of  these  peepshow  rifts:  and  lo!  at  the  foot 
of  the  shaft,  imaged,  as  it  were,  far  down  in  a  luminous 
well,  a  green  hillside  and  three  figures  standing.  A 
white  speck  fluttered;  and  fluttered  until  the  rift  closed 
again.     Flora's    handkerchief!     Blessings    on    the    brave 

25  hand  that  waved  it! — at  a  moment  when  (as  I  have  since 
heard  and  knew  without  need  of  hearing)  her  heart  was 
down  in  her  shoes,  or,  to  speak  accurately,  in  the  milk- 
maid Janet's.  Singular  in  many  things,  she  was  at  one 
with  the  rest  of  her  sex  in  its  native  and  incurable  distrust 

30  of  man's  inventions. 

I  am  bound  to  say  that  my  own  faith  in  aerostatics  was  a 
plant — a  sensitive  plant — of  extremely  tender  growth.  .  .  . 
But  to  my  unspeakable  relief   the  Lunardi  floated  up- 
ward, and  continued  to  float,   almost  without  a  tremor. 


292  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Only  by  reading  the  barometer,  or  by  casting  scraps  of 
paper  overboard,  could  we  tell  that  the  machine  moved  at 
all.  Now  and  again  we  revolved  slowly:  so  Byfield's 
compass  informed  us,  but  for  ourselves  we  had  never 
guessed  it.  We  were  the  only  point  in  space,  without  5 
possibility  of  comparison  with  another.  ... 

My  hands,  by  this  time,  were  numb  with  cold.  W^e 
had  been  ascending  steadily,  and  Byfield's  English 
thermometer  stood  at  thirteen  degrees.  I  borrowed  from 
the  heap  a  thicker  overcoat,  in  the  pocket  of  which  I  was  10 
lucky  enough  to  find  a  pair  of  furred  gloves;  and  leaned 
over  for  another  look  below,  still  with  a  corner  of  my  eye 
for  the  aeronaut,  who  stood  biting  his  nails,  as  far  from 
me  as  the  car  allowed. 

The  sea-fog  had  vanished,  and  the  south  of  Scotland   15 
lay  spread  beneath  us  from  sea  to  sea,  like  a  map  in 
monotint.     Nay,  yonder  was  England,  with  the  Solway 
cleaving  the  coast — a  broad,  bright  spear-head,  slightly 
bent  at  the  tip — and  the  fells  of  Cumberland  beyond, 
mere  hummocks  on  the  horizon;  all  else  flat  as  a  board  or  20 
as  the  bottom  of  a  saucer.     White  threads  of  high-road 
connected  town  to  town:  the  intervening  hills  had  fallen 
down,  and  the  towns,  as  if  in  fright,  had  shrunk  into 
themselves,  contracting  their  suburbs  as  a  snail  his  horns. 
The  old  poet  was  right  who  said  that  Olympians  bad  a  25 
delicate  view.     The  lace-makers  of  Valenciennes  might 
have   had   the  tracing  of  those  towns   and   high-roads; 
those  knots  of  gui-pure,   and  ligatures  of  finest  reseau- 
work.     And  when  I  considered  that  what  I  looked  down 
on — this,  with  its  arteries  and  nodules  of  public  traflSc —  30 
was  a  nation ;  that  each  silent  nodule  held  some  thousands 
of  men,  each  man  moderately  ready  to  die  in  defence  of 
his  shopboard  and  hen-roost:  it  came  into  my  mind  that 


DESCRIPTION  293 

my  Emperor's  emblem  was  the  bee,  and  this  Britain  the 
spider's  web,  sure  enough. 

Suggestions:  This  description  is  noteworthy  in  nearly  every 
way.  From  the  point  of  view  (an  extraordinary  one)  the  scene 
(an  equally  extraordinary  one)  is  described  with  convincing 
skill  and  apparent  veracity.  The  student  should  note  especially 
the  constant  use  of  "fundamental  images"  and  comparisons, 
and  their  unusual  force  and  cleverness.  He  should  also  ob- 
serve the  means  by  which  a  greater  or  less  degree  of  distance 
is   indicated. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Describe,  from  a  changing  point  of  view,  a  landscape  with 
which  you  are  familiar. 

Describe,  from  a  high  and  distant  point  of  view,  a  football 
or  baseball  game  on  an  athletic  field;  a  boat-race;  a  naval  re- 
view; a  procession  through  the  streets  of  a  city. 


SPRING  IN  A  SIDE  STREET* 

Brander  Matthews 

IN  the  city  the  spring  comes  earlier  than  it  does  in  the 
country,   and   the   horsechestnuts   in   the   sheltered 

5  squares  sometimes  break  into  blossom  a  fortnight  before 
their  brethren  in  the  open  fields.  That  year  the  spring 
came  earlier  than  usual,  both  in  the  country  and  in  the 
city,  for  March,  going  out  like  a  lion,  made  an  April-fool 
of  the  following  month,  and  the  huge  banks  of  snow  heaped 

10  high  by  the  sidewalks  vanished  in  three  or  four  days, 
leaving  the  gutters  only  a  little  thicker  with  mud  than 
they  are  accustomed  to  be.  Very  trying  to  the  convales- 
cent was  the  uncertain  weather,  with  its  obvious  inability 

*  Reprinted  by  permission  from  Vignettes  of  Manhattan.   New  York: 
Harper  &  Brothers. 


294  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

to  know  its  own  mind,  with  its  dark  fog  one  morning  and 
its  brisk  wind  in  the  afternoon,  with  its  mid-day  as  bright 
as  June  and  its  sudden  chill  descending  before  nightfall. 

Yet  when  the  last  week  of  April  came,  and  the  grass  in 
the  little  square  around  the  corner  was  green  again,  and  5 
the  shrubs  were  beginning  to  flower  out,  the  sick  man  also 
felt  his  vigor  returning.  His  strength  came  back  with 
the  spring,  and  restored  health  sent  fresh  blood  coursing 
through  his  veins  as  the  sap  was  rising  in  the  branches  of 
the  tree  before  his  window.  He  had  had  a  hard  struggle,  10 
he  knew,  although  he  did  not  suspect  that  more  than  once 
he  had  wrestled  with  death  itself.  Now  his  appetite  had 
awakened  again,  and  he  had  more  force  to  withstand  the 
brooding  sadness  which  sought  to  master  him. 

The  tree  before  his  window  was  but  a  shabby  sycamore,   15 
and  the  window  belonged  to  a  hall  bedroom  in  a  shabby 
boarding-house   down   a   side   street.     The  young   man 
himself  lay  back  in  the  steamer  chair  lent  him  by  one  of 
the  few  friends  he  had  in  town,  and  his  overcoat  was 
thrown  over  his  knees.     His  hands,  shrunken  yet  sinewy,   20 
lay  crossed  upon  a  book  in  his  lap.     His  body  was  wasted 
by  sickness,  but  the  frame  was  well  knit  and  solid.     His 
face  was  still  white  and  thin,  although  the  yellow  pallor  of 
the  sick-bed  had  gone  already.     His  scanty  boyish  beard 
that  curled  about  his  chin  had  not  been  trimmed  for  two  25 
months,   and  his  uncut  brown  hair  fell  thickly  on  the 
collar  of  his  coat.     His  dark  eyes  bore  the  mark  of  recent 
suffering,  but  they  revealed  also  a  steadfast  soul,  strong  to 
withstand  misfortune. 

His  room  was  on  the  north  side  of  the  street,  and  the  30 
morning  sun  shone  in  his  window,  as  he  lay  back  in  the 
chair,  grateful  for  its  warmth.     A  heavy  cart  rumbled 
along  slowly   over  the   worn  and    irregular  pavement;  it 
came  to  a  stand  at  the  corner,  and  a  gang  of  workmen 


DESCRIPTION  295 

swiftly  emptied  it  of  the  steel  rails  it  contained,  dropping 
them  on  the  sidewalk  one  by  one  with  a  loud  clang  which 
reverberated  harshly  far  down  the  street.  From  the  little 
knot  of  men  who  were  relaying  the  horse-car  track  came 

5  cries  of  command,  and  then  a  rail  would  drop  into  position, 
and  be  spiked  swiftly  to  its  place.  Then  the  laborers  would 
draw  aside  while  an  arrested  horse-car  urged  forward 
again,  with  the  regular  footfall  of  its  one  horse,  as  audible 
above  the  mighty  roar  of  the  metropolis  as  the  jingle  of 

10  the  little  bell  on  the  horse's  collar.  At  last  there  came 
from  over  the  housetops  a  loud  whistle  of  escaping  steam, 
followed  shortly  by  a  dozen  similar  signals,  proclaiming 
the  mid-day  rest.  A  rail  or  two  more  clanged  down  on 
the  others,  and  then  the  cart  rumbled  away.     The  work- 

15  men  relaying  the  track  had  already  seated  themselves  on 
the  curb  to  eat  their  dinner,  while  one  of  them  had  gone  to 
the  saloon  at  the  corner  for  a  large  can  of  the  new  beer 
advertised  in  the  window  by  the  gaudy  lithograph  of  a 
frisky  young  goat  bearing  a  plump  young  goddess  on  his 

20  back. 

The  invalid  was  glad  of  the  respite  from  the  more  violent 
noises  of  track-layers,  for  his  head  was  not  yet  as  clear  as 
it  might  be,  and  his  nerves  were  strained  by  pain.  He 
leaned  forward  and  looked  down  at  the  street  below,  catch- 

25  ing  the  eye  of  a  young  man  who  was  bawling  "Straw- 
b'rees!  straw-b'rees!"  at  the  top  of  an  unmelodious 
voice.  The  invalid  smiled,  for  he  knew  that  the  street 
venders  of  strawberries  were  an  infallible  sign  of  spring — 
an  indication  of  its  arrival  as  indisputable  as  the  small 

30  square  labels  announcing  that  three  of  the  houses  opposite 
to  him  were  "To  let."  The  first  of  May  was  at  hand. 
He  wondered  whether  the  flower-market  in  Union  Square 
had  already  opened;  and  he  recalled  the  early  mornings 
of  the  preceding  spring,  when  the  girl  he  loved,  the  girl 


296  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

who  had  promised  to  marry  him,  had  gone  with  him 
to  Union  Square  to  pick  out  young  roses  and  full  blown 
geraniums  worthy  to  bloom  in  the  windows  of  her  parlor 
looking  out  on  Central  Park. 

He  thought  of  her  often  that  morning,  and  without  5 
bitterness,  though  their  engagement  had  been  broken  in 
the  fall,  three  months  or  more  before  he  was  taken  sick. 
He  had  not  seen  her  since  Christmas,  and  he  found  him- 
self wondering  how  she  would  look  that  afternoon,  and 
whether  she  was  happy.     His  reverie  was  broken  by  the   10 
jangling  notes  of  an  ill-tuned  piano  in  the  next  house, 
separated  from  his  little  room  only  by  a  thin  party-wall. 
Someone  was  trying  to  pick  out  the  simple  tune  of  "Wait 
till  the  clouds  roll  by."     Seemingly  it  was  the  practice 
hour  for  one  of  the  children  next  door,  whose  plajiul   15 
voices  he  had  often  heard.     Seemingly  also  the  task  was 
unpleasant,  for  the  piano  and  the  tune  and  the  hearer 
suffered  from  the  ill-will  of  the  childish  performer. 

A  sudden  hammering  of  a  steel  rail  in  the  street  below 
notified  him  the  nooning  was  over,  and  that  the  workmen  20 
had  gone  back  to  their  labors.  Somehow  he  had  failed 
to  hear  the  stroke  of  one  from  the  steeple  of  the  church  at 
the  corner  of  the  avenue,  a  short  block  away.  Now  he 
became  conscious  of  a  permeating  odor,  and  he  knew  that 
the  luncheon  hour  of  the  boarding-house  had  arrived.  He  25 
had  waked  early,  and  his  breakfast  had  been  very  light. 
He  felt  ready  for  food,  and  he  was  glad  when  the  servant 
brought  him  up  a  plate  of  cold  beef  and  a  saucer  of  prunes. 
His  appetite  was  excellent,  and  he  ate  with  relish  and 
enjoyment.  30 

When  he  had  made  an  end  of  his  unpretending  meal, 
he  leaned  back  again  in  his  chair.  A  turbulent  wind 
blew  the  dust  of  the  street  high  in  the  air  and  set  swinging 
the  budding  branches  of  the  sycamore  before  the  window. 


DESCRIPTION  297 

As  he  looked  at  the  tender  green  of  the  young  leaves 
dancing  before  him  in  the  sunlight  he  felt  the  spring-time 
in  his  blood ;  he  was  strong  again  with  the  strength  of  youth; 
he  was  able  to  cope  with  all  morbid  fancies,  and  to  cast 
5  away  all  repining.  He  wished  himself  in  the  country — 
somewhere  where  there  were  brooks  and  groves  and  grass — 
somewhere  where  there  were  quiet  and  rest  and  surcease  of 
noise — somewhere  where  there  were  time  and  space  to 
think  out  the  past  and  to  plan  out  the  future  resolutely — 

10  somewhere  where  there  were  not  two  hand-organs  at 
opposite  ends  of  the  block  vying  which  should  be  the  more 
violent,  one  playing  "Annie  Laurie"  and  the  other 
"Annie  Rooney. "  He  winced  as  the  struggle  between  the 
two  organs  attained  its  height,  while  the  child  next  door 

15  pounded  the  piano  more  viciously  than  before.  Then  he 
smiled. 

With  returning  health  why  should  he  mind  petty  an- 
noyances ?  In  a  week  or  so  he  would  be  able  to  go  back 
to  the  store  and  to  begin  again  to  earn  his  own  living. 

20  No  doubt  the  work  would  be  hard  at  first,  but  hard  work 
was  what  he  needed  now.  For  the  sake  of  its  results  in 
the  future,  and  for  its  own  sake  also,  he  needed  severe 
labor.  Other  young  men  there  were  a-plenty  in  the 
thick  of  the  struggle,  but  he  knew  himself  as  stout  of 

25  heart  as  any  in  the  whole  city,  and  why  might  not  fortune 
favor  him  too.^  With  money  and  power  and  position 
he  could  hold  his  own  in  New  York;  and  perhaps  some  of 
those  who  thought  little  of  him  now  would  then  be  glad 
to  know  him. 

30  While  he  lay  back  in  the  steamer  chair  in  his  hall  room 
the  shadows  began  to  lengthen  a  little,  and  the  long  day 
drew  nearer  to  its  end.  When  next  he  roused  himself 
the  hand-organs  had  both  gone  away,  and  the  child  next 
door  had  given  over  her  practising,  and  the  street  was 


298  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

quiet  again,  save  for  the  high  notes  of  a  soprano  voice 
singing  a  florid  aria  by  an  open  window  in  the  conserva- 
tory of  music  in  the  next  block,  and  save  also  for  an  un- 
usual rattle  of  vehicles  drawing  up  almost  in  front  of  the 
door  of  the  boarding-house.  With  an  effort  he  raised  him-  5 
self,  and  saw  a  line  of  carriages  on  the  other  side  of  the  way, 
moving  slowly  toward  the  corner.  A  swirling  sand-storm 
sprang  up  again  in  the  street  below,  and  a  simoom  of  dust 
almost  hid  from  him  the  faces  of  those  who  sat  in  the 
carriages — ^young  girls  dressed  in  light  colors,  and  young  10 
men  with  buttoned  frock-coats.  They  were  chatting 
easily;   now  and  again  a  gay  laugh  rang  out. 

He  wondered  if  it  were  time  for  the  wedding.  With 
difficulty  he  twisted  himself  in  his  chair  and  took  from 
the  bureau  behind  him  an  envelope  containing  the  wed-  15 
ding-cards.  The  ceremony  was  fixed  for  three.  He 
looked  at  his  watch,  and  he  saw  that  it  lacked  but  a 
few  minutes  of  that  hour.  His  hand  trembled  a  little  as 
he  put  the  watch  back  in  his  pocket;  and  he  gazed 
steadily  into  space  until  the  bell  in  the  steeple  of  the  20 
church  at  the  corner  of  the  avenue  struck  three  times. 
The  hour  appointed  for  the  wedding  had  arrived.  There 
were  still  carriages  driving  up  swiftly  to  deposit  belated 
guests. 

The  convalescent  young  man  in  the  hall  bedroom  of  the  25 
shabby  boarding-house  in  the  side  street  was  not  yet  strong 
enough  to  venture  out  in  the  spring  sunshine  and  to  be 
present  at  the  ceremony.  But  as  he  lay  there  in  the  rickety 
steamer  chair  with  the  old  overcoat  across  his  knees,  he 
had  no  difficulty  in  evoking  the  scene  in  the  church.  He  30 
saw  the  middle-aged  groom  standing  at  the  rail  awaiting 
the  bride.  He  heard  the  solemn  and  yet  joyous  strains 
of  the  wedding-march.  He  saw  the  bride  pass  slowly 
up  the  aisle  on  the  arm  of  her  father,  with  the  lace  veil 


DESCRIPTION  299 

scarcely  lighter  or  fairer  than  her  own  filmy  hair.  He 
wondered  whether  she  would  be  pale,  and  whether  her 
conscience  would  reproach  her  as  she  stood  at  the  altar. 
He  heard  the  clergyman  ask  the  questions  and  pronounce 
5  the  benediction.  He  saw  the  new-made  wife  go  down 
the  aisle  again  on  the  arm  of  her  husband.  He  sighed 
wearily,  and  lay  back  in  his  chair  with  his  eyes  closed, 
as  though  to  keep  out  the  unwelcome  vision.  He  did  not 
move  when  the  carriages  again  crowded  past  his  door, 

10  and  went  up  to  the  church  porch  one  after  another  in 
answer  to  hoarse  calls  from  conflicting  voices. 

He  lay  there  for  a  long  while  motionless  and  silent. 
He  was  thinking  about  himself,  about  his  hopes,  which  had 
been  as  bright  as  the  sunshine  of  spring,  about  his  bitter 

15  disappointment.  He  was  pondering  on  the  mysteries 
of  the  universe,  and  asking  himself  whether  he  could  be 
of  any  use  in  the  world — ^for  he  still  had  high  ambitions. 
He  was  wondering  what  might  be  the  value  of  any  one 
man's  labor  for  his  fellow-men,  and  he  thought  harshly 

20  of  the  order  of  things.  He  said  to  himself  that  we  all 
slip  out  of  sight  when  we  die,  and  the  waters  close  over  us, 
for  the  best  of  us  are  soon  forgotten,  and  so  are  the  worst, 
since  it  makes  little  difference  whether  the  coin  you  throw 
into  the  pool  is  gold  or  copper — the  rarer  metal  does  not 

25   make  the  more  ripples.     Then,  as  he  saw  the  long  shafts 

of  almost  level  sunshine  sifting  through  the  tiny  leaves 

-   of  the  tree  before  his  window,  he  took  heart  again  as  he 

recalled  the  great  things  accomplished  by  one  man.     He 

gave  over  his  mood  of  self-pity;  and  he  even  smiled  at 

30  the  unconscious  conceit  of  his  attitude  toward  himself. 

He  was  recalled  from  his  long  reverie  by  the  thundering 

of  a  heavy  fire-engine,  which  crashed  its  way  down  the 

street,  with  its  rattling  hose-reel  tearing  along  after  it. 

In  the  stillness  that  followed,  broken  only  by  the  warning 


300  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

whistles  of  the  engine  as  it  crossed  avenue  after  avenue 
further  and  further  east,  he  found  time  to  remember 
that  every  man's  struggle  forward  helps  along  the  advance 
of  mankind  at  large.  The  humble  fireman  who  does  his 
duty  and  dies  serves  the  cause  of  humanity.  5 

The  swift  twilight  of  New  York  was  almost  upon  him 
when  he  was  next  distracted  from  his  thoughts  by  the 
crossing  shouts  of  loud-voiced  men  bawling  forth  a  catch- 
penny extra  of  a  third-rate  evening  paper.  The  cries 
arose  from  both  sides  of  the  street  at  once,  and  they  10 
ceased  while  the  fellows  sold  a  paper  here  and  there  to 
the  householders  whose  curiosity  called  them  to  the 
doorstep. 

The  sky  was  clear,  and  a  single  star  shone  out  sharply. 
The  air  was  fresh,  and  yet  balmy.  The  clanging  of  rails  15 
had  ceased  an  hour  before,  and  the  gang  of  men  who  were 
spiking  the  iron  into  place  had  dispersed  each  to  his  own 
home.  The  day  was  drawing  to  an  end.  Again  there 
was  an  odor  of  cooking  diffused  through  the  house,  herald- 
ing the  dinner  hour.  20 

But  the  young  man  who  lay  back  in  the  steamer  chair 
in  the  hall  bedroom  of  the  boarding-house  was  unconscious 
of  all  except  his  own  thoughts.  Before  him  was  a  picture 
of  a  train  of  cars  speeding  along  moonlit  valleys,  and 
casting  a  hurrying  shadow.  In  the  train  as  he  saw  it,  25 
was  the  bride  of  that  afternoon,  borne  away  by  the  side  of 
her  husband.  But  it  was  the  bride  he  saw,  and  not  the 
husband.  He  saw  her  pale  face  and  her  luminous  eyes 
and  her  ashen-gold  hair;  and  he  wondered  whether  in  the 
years  to  come  she  would  be  as  happy  as  if  she  had  kept  30 
her  promise  to  marry  him. 

Suggestions:  The  value  of  this  sketch  lies  in  its  very  care- 
ful and  convincing  "local  color," — i.  e.,  the  close  description  of 
details  peculiar  to  the  place  or  situation    under    consideration. 


DESCRIPTION  301 

In  planning  your  own  theme,  select  carefully  all  details  that 
will  contribute  to  the  final  impression  that  you  aim  to  create — 
joy,   weariness,   monotony,   delirium,   or   what  not. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

Describe  a  convalescent's  mood  under  other  circumstances. 
Describe  a  child's  sensations  and  ideas  during  an  illness. 


MORNING  IN  MATSUE 
Lafcadio  Hearn* 

THE  first  of  the  noises  of  a  Matsue  day  comes  to  the 
sleeper  like  the  throbbing  of  a  slow,  enormous 
pulse  exactly  under  his  ear.  It  is  a  great,  soft,  dull 
buffet  of  sound — like  a  heartbeat  in  its  regularity,  in  its 

5  muflled  depth,  in  the  way  it  quakes  up  through  one's 
pillow  so  as  to  be  felt  rather  than  heard.  It  is  simply  the 
pounding  of  the  ponderous  pestle  of  the  kometsuki,  the 
cleaner  of  rice, — a  sort  of  colossal  wooden  mallet  with  a 
handle  about  fifteen  feet  long  horizontally  balanced  on  a 

10  pivot.  By  treading  with  all  his  force  on  the  end  of  the 
handle,  the  naked  kometsuki  elevates  the  pestle,  which  is 
then  allowed  to  fall  back  by  its  own  weight  into  the  rice- 
tub.  The  measured  muflfled  echoing  of  its  fall  seems  to 
me  the  most  pathetic  of  all  sounds  of  Japanese  life;  it  is 

15  the  beating,  indeed,  of  the  Pulse  of  the  Land. 

Then  the  boom  of  the  great  bell  of  Tokoji,  the  Zenshu 

temple,    shakes   over   the   town;   then   come   melancholy 

echoes  of  drumming  from  the  tiny  little  temple  of  Jizo 

in  the  street  Zaimokucho,  near  my  house,  signifying  the 

*Glimpses  of   Unfamiliar  Japan,  Houghton,  MiflBiin   &   Co,   1894' 
pp.   139-150,  selected. 


302  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Buddhist  hour  of  morning  prayer.  And  finally  the  cries 
of  the  earliest  itinerant  venders  begin, — ''  Daikoyai! 
kabuya-kabur' — the  sellers  of  daikou  and  other  strange 
vegetables.  '*MoyayamoyaI'' — the  plaintive  call  of  the 
women  who  sell  little  thin  slips  of  kindling-wood  for  the  5 
lighting  of  charcoal  fires. 

Roused  thus  by  these  earliest  sounds  of  the  city's 
wakening  life,  I  slide  open  my  little  Japanese  paper  window 
to  look  out  upon  the  morning  over  a  soft  green  cloud  of 
spring  foliage  rising  from  the  river-bounded  garden  below.  10 
Before  me,  tremulously  mirroring  everything  upon ,  its 
farther  side,  glimmers  the  broad  glassy  mouth  of  the 
Ohashigawa,  opening  into  the  grand  Shinji  lake,  which 
spreads  out  broadly  to  the  right  in  a  dim  gray  frame  of 
peaks.  Just  opposite  to  me,  across  the  stream,  the  blue-  15 
pointed  Japanese  dwellings  have  their  to*  all  closed; 
they  are  still  shut  up  like  boxes,  for  it  is  not  yet  sunrise, 
although  it  is  day. 

But  oh,  the  charm  of  the  vision, — those  first  ghostly 
love-colors  of  a  morning  steeped  in  mist  soft  as  sleep  20 
itself  resolved  into  a  visible  exhalation!     Long  reaches  of 
faintly-tinted  vapor  cloud  the  far  lake  verge, — long  nebulous 
bands,  such  as  you  may  have  seen  in  old  Japanese  picture- 
books,  and  must  have  deemed  only  artistic  whimsicalities 
unless  you  had  previously  looked  upon  the  real  phenomena    "iS 
All  the  bases  of  the  mountain  are  veiled  by  them,  and  they 
stretch  athwart  the  loftier  peaks  at  different  heights  like 
immeasurable  lengths  of  gauze  (this  singular  appearance 
the  Japanese  term  "shelving"),  so  that  the  lake  appears 
incomparably  larger  than  it  really  is,  and  not  an  actual  30 
lake,  but  a  beautiful  spectral  sea  of  the  same  tint  as  the 
dawn-sky  and  mixing  with  it,  while  peak-tips  rise  like 

♦Thick  solid  sliding  shutters  of  unpainted  wood,  which  in  Japanese 
houses  serve  both  as  shutters  and  doors. 


DESCRIPTION  303 

islands  from  the  brume,  and  visionary  strips  of  hill-ranges 
figure  as  league-long  causeways  stretching  out  of  sight — 
an  exquisite  chaos,  ever  changing  aspect  as  the  delicate 
.  fogs  rise,  slowly,  very  slowly.  As  the  sun's  yellow  rim 
5  comes  into  sight,  fine  thin  lines  of  warmer  tone — spectral 
violets  and  opalines — shoot  across  the  flood,  treetops  take 
tender  fire,  and  the  unpainted  fa9ades  of  high  edifices 
across  the  water  change  their  wood-color  to  vapory  gold 
through  the  delicious  haze. 

10  Looking  sunward,  up  the  long  Ohashigawa,  beyond 
the  many-pillared  wooden  bridge,  one  high-pooped  junk, 
just  hoisting  sail,  seems  to  me  the  most  fantastically 
beautiful  craft  I  ever  saw,  a  dream  of  Orient  seas,  so 
idealized  by  the  vapor  it  is;  the  ghost  of  a  junk,  but  a 

15  ghost  that  catches  the  light  as  clouds  do;  a  shape  of  gold 
mist,  seemingly  semi-diaphanous,  and  suspended  in  pale 
blue  light. 

And  now  from  the  river-front  touching  my  garden 
there  rises  to  me  a  sound  of  clapping  of  hands, — one,  two, 

20  three,  four  claps, — but  the  owner  of  the  hands  is  screened 
from  view  by  the  shrubbery.  At  the  same  time,  however, 
I  see  men  and  women  descending  the  stone  steps  of  the 
wharves  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  Ohashigawa,  all 
with  little  blue  towels  tucked  into  their  girdles.     They 

25  wash  their  faces  and  hands  and  rinse  their  mouths, — 
the  customary  ablution  preliminary  to  Shinto  prayer. 
Then  they  turn  their  faces  to  the  sunrise  and  clap  their 
hands  four  times  and  pray.  From  the  long  high  white 
bridge  come  other  clappings,  like  echoes,  and  others  again 

30  from  far  light  graceful  craft,  curved  like  new  moons, — 
extraordinary  boats  in  which  I  see  bare-limbed  fishermen 
standing  with  foreheads  bowed  to  the  golden  East.  Now 
the  clappings  multiply, — multiply  at  last  into  an  almost 


304  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

continuous  volleying  of  sharp  sounds.  For  all  the  popula- 
tion are  saluting  the  rising  sun, — O-Hi-San,  the  Lady 
of  Fire, — Amaterasu — oho-mi-Kami,  the  Lady  of  the 
Great  Light. 

"Ha—ke-kyo!''  5 

My  uguisu  is  awake  at  last  and  utters  his  morning 
prayer.  You  do  not  know  what  an  uguisu  is.?  An 
uguisu  is  a  holy  little  bird  that  professes  Buddhism.  All 
uguisu  have  professed  Buddhism  from  time  immemorial; 
all  uguisu  preach  alike  to  men  the  excellence  of  the  divine  lo 
Sutra. 

''Ho—ke-kyo.r' 

Very   brief   indeed   is   my   little   feathered   Buddhist's 
confession    of   faith, — only    the    sacred    name   reiterated 
over  and  over  again  like  a  litany,  with  liquid  bursts  of   15 
twittering  between. 

''Ho—ke-kyor 

Only  this  one  phrase,  but  how  deliciously  he  utters 
it!  With  what  slow  amorous  ecstasy  he  dwells  upon  its 
golden  syllables!  20 

''Ho—ke-kyoV 

Always  he  makes  a  reverent  little  pause  after  uttering 
it  and  before  shrilling  out  his  ecstatic  warble, — his  bird- 
hymn  of  praise.  First  the  warble;  then  a  pause  of  about 
five  seconds;  then  a  slow,  sweet,  solemn  utterance  of  the  25 
holy  name  in  a  tone  as  of  meditative  wonder;  then  another 
pause;  then  another  wild,  rich,  passionate  warble.  Could 
you  see  him,  you  would  marvel  how  so  powerful  and 
penetrating  a  soprano  could  ripple  from  so  minute  a 
throat;  for  he  is  one  of  the  very  tiniest  of  all  feathered  30 
singers;  yet  his  chant  can  be  heard  far  across  the  broad 


DESCRIPTION  305 

river,  and  children  going  to  school  pause  daily  on  the 
bridge,  a  whole  cho  away,  to  listen  to  his  song.  And 
uncomely  withal:  a  neutral-tinted  mite,  almost  lost  in 
his  immense  box-cage  of  hinoki  wood,  darkened  with 
5  paper  screens  over  its  little  wire-grated  windows,  for  he 
loves  the  gloom. 

Delicate  he  is  and  exacting  even  to  tyranny.  All  his  diet 
must  be  laboriously  triturated  and  weighed  in  scales,  and 
measured  out  to  him  at  precisely  the  same  hour  each  day. 

10  It  demands  all  possible  care  and  attention  merely  to  keep 
him  alive.  He  is  precious,  nevertheless,  "Far  and  from 
the  uttermost  coasts  is  the  price  of  him,"  so  rare  he  is. 
Indeed,  I  could  not  have  afforded  to  buy  him.  He  was 
sent  to  me  by  one  of  the  sweetest  ladies  in  Japan,  daughter 

15  of  the  governor  of  Izumo,  who,  thinking  the  foreign  teacher 
might  feel  lonesome  during  a  brief  illness,  made  him 
the  exquisite  gift  of  this  dainty  creature. 

The  clapping  of  hands  has  ceased;  the  toil  of  the  day 
begins;  continually  louder  and  louder  the  pattering  of  geta 

20  over  the  bridge.  It  is  a  sound  never  to  be  forgotten,  this 
pattering  of  geta  over  the  Ohashi, — rapid,  merry,  musical, 
like  the  sound  of  an  enormous  dance;  and  a  dance  it 
veritably  is.  The  whole  population  is  moving  on  tip- 
toe, and  the  multitudinous  twinkling  of  feet  over  the  verge 

25  of  the  sunlit  roadway  is  an  astonishment.  All  those  feet 
are  small,  symmetrical, — light  as  the  feet  of  figures  painted 
on  Greek  vases, — and  the  step  is  always  taken  toe  first; 
indeed,  with  geta  it  could  be  taken  no  other  way,  for  the 
heel  touches  neither  the  geta  not  the  ground,  and  the  foot  is 

30  tilted  forward  by  the  wedge-shaped  wooden  sole.  Merely 
to  stand  upon  a  pair  of  geta  is  difficult  for  one  unaccus- 
tomed to  their  use,  yet  you  see  Japanese  children  running 
at  full  speed  in  geta  with  soles  at  least  three  inches  high, 
held  to  the  foot  only  by  a  forestrap  fastened  between  the 


306  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

great  toe  and  the  other  toes;  and  they  never  trip  and  the 
geta  never  falls  off. 

Now  children  begin  to  appear,  hurrying  to  school. 
The  undulation  of  the  wide  sleeves  of  their  pretty  speckled 
robes,  as  they  run,  looks  precisely  like  a  fluttering  of  5 
extraordinary  butterflies.  The  junks  spread  their  great 
white  or  yellow  wings,  and  the  funnels  of  the  little  steamers 
which  have  been  lying  all  night  by  the  wharves  begin  to 
smoke. 

One  of  the  day  lake  steamers  lying  at  the  opposite  10 
wharf  has  just  opened  its  steam-throat  to  utter  the  most 
unimaginable,  piercing,  desperate,  furious  howl.     When 
that   cry   is   heard   everybody   laughs.     The   other   little 
steamboats  utter  only  plaintive  mooings,  but  unto  this 
particular  vessel, — newly  built  and  launched  by  a  rival  15 
company, — there  has  been  given  a  voice  expressive  to  the 
most   amazing   degree  of  reckless   hostility   and   savage 
defiance.     The  good  people  of  Matsue,  upon  hearing  its 
voice  for  the  first  time,  gave  it  forthwith  a  new  and  just 
name, — Okami-Maru.     "Maru"    signifies   a   steamship.  20 
"Okami"  signifies  a  wolf. 

The  vapors  have  vanished,  sharply  revealing  a  beau- 
tiful little  islet  in  the  lake,  lying  scarcely  half  a  mile  away, 
— a  low,  narrow  strip  of  land  with  a  Shinto  shrine  upon  it, 
shadowed  by  giant  pines;  not  pines  like  ours,  but  huge,  25 
gnarled,  shaggy,  tortuous  shapes,  vast-reaching  like 
ancient  oaks. 

Now  the  sky  is  blue  down  to  the  horizon,  the  air  is  a 
caress  of  spring.  I  go  forth  to  wander  through  the  queer 
old  city.  ^ 


DESCRIPTION  307 

Suggestions:  Note  the  point  of  view  in  the  foregoing  de- 
scription. Who  and  where  is  the  speaker  ?  In  what  order  are 
the  different  sounds  and  sights  described?  Is  this  order  con- 
vincing and  natural?  Are  all  changes  in  point  of  view  made 
sufficiently  evident? 

What  artistic  impression  does  the  description,  as  a  whole, 
make  upon  you  ?  What  do  you  consider  its  chief  merit  ? — What 
its  chief  defect  ?  Are  there  any  obvious  digressions  ?  Have  these 
digressions  any  justification? 

What  do  you  think  of  the  author's  vocabulary?  Is  it  un- 
usual?— If  so,  why?  Defend  the  description  from  a  possible 
charge  of  "fine  writing." 

ADAPTED   SUBJECTS 

Morning  in  the  country. 
Morning  in  the  city. 
A  strange  scene. 

The   most  picturesque   landscape   I  ever   saw. 
A  familiar  scene,  described  for  "atmosphere"  of  a  definitely 
determined  kind. 


THE  SWALLOW* 
Gilbert  White 
LETTER  XVIII 

TO   THE    HONOURABLE  DAINES   BARRINGTON 

Selborne,  Jan.  29,  1774. 

Dear  Sir: 
The  house-swallow,  or  chimney-swallow,  is  undoubtedly 
the  first  comer  of  all  the  British  hirundines;  and  appears 
in  general  on  or  about  the  thirteenth  of  April,  as  I  have 
remarked  from  many  years'  observation.     Not  but  now 

^Natural  History  of  Selborne,  J.  M.  Dent  &  Co.  London,  pp.  145-49. 


308  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  then  a  straggler  is  seen  much  earlier:  and,  in  par- 
ticular, when  I  was  a  boy  I  observed  a  swallow  for  a  whole 
day  together  on  a  sunny,  warm  Shrove  Tuesday;  which 
day  could  not  fall  out  later  than  the  middle  of  March,  and 
often  happened  early  in  February.  5 

It  is  worth  remarking  that  these  birds  are  seen  first  about 
lakes  and  mill-ponds;  and  it  is  also  very  particular,  that 
if  these  early  visitors  happen  to  find  frost  and  snow,  as 
was  the  case  of  the  two  dreadful  springs  of  1770  and  1771, 
they  immediately  withdraw  for  a  time.  A  circumstance  10 
this  much  more  in  favor  of  hiding  than  migration;  since 
it  is  much  more  probable  that  a  bird  should  retire  to  its 
hybernaculum  just  at  hand,  than  return  for  a  week  or  two 
only  to  warmer  latitudes. 

The  swallow,  though  called  the  chimney-swallow,  by  no   15 
means  builds  altogether  in  chimneys,   but  often  within 
barns  and  out-houses  against  the  rafters;  and  so  she  did 
in  Virgil's  time: 

....    "Ante 
Gamila  quam  tignis  nidos  suspendat  hirundo."  *" 

In  Sweden  she  builds  in  barns,  and  is  called  ladu  aivala, 
the  barn-swallow.  Besides,  in  the  warmer  parts  of  Europe, 
there  are  no  chimneys  to  houses,  except  they  are  English- 
built:  in  these  countries  she  constructs  her  nest  in  porches, 
and  gateways,  and  galleries,  and  open  halls.  ^ 

Here  and  there  a  bird  may  affect  some  odd,  peculiar 
place;  as  we  have  known  a  swallow  build  down  the  shaft 
of  an  old  well,  through  which  chalk  had  been  formerly 
drawn  up  for  the  purpose  of  manure:  but  in  general 
with  us  this  hirundo  breeds  in  chimneys;  and  loves  to  30 
haunt  those  stacks  where  there  is  a  constant  fire,  no  doubt 
for  the  sake  of  warmth.  Not  that  it  can  subsist  in  the 
immediate  shaft  where  there  is  a  fire:  but  prefers  one 


DESCRIPTION  309 

adjoining  to  that  of  the  kitchen,  and  disregards  the  per- 
petual smoke  of  that  funnel,  as  I  have  often  observed  with 
some  degree  of  wonder. 

Five  or  six  or  more  feet  down  the  chimney  does  this  little 
5  bird  begin  to  form  her  nest  about  the  middle  of  May, 
which  consists,  like  that  of  the  house-martin,  of  a  crust 
or  shell  composed  of  dirt  or  mud,  mixed  with  short  pieces 
of  straw  to  render  it  tough  and  permanent;  with  this 
difference,  that  whereas  the  shell  of  the  martin  is  nearly 

10  hemispheric,  that  of  the  swallow  is  open  at  the  top,  and 
like  half  a  deep  dish:  this  nest  is  lined  with  fine  grasses, 
and  feathers  which  are  often  collected  as  they  float  in  the 
air. 

Wonderful  is  the  address  which  this  adroit  bird  shows  all 

15  day  long  in  ascending  and  descending  with  security  through 
so  narrow  a  pass.  When  hovering  over  the  mouth  of  the 
funnel,  the  vibrations  of  her  wings  acting  on  the  confined 
air  occasion  a  rumbling  like  thunder.  It  is  not  improbable 
that  the  dam  submits  to  this  inconvenient  situation  so  low 

20  in  the  shaft,  in  order  to  secure  her  broods  from  rapacious 
birds,  and  particularly  from  owls,  which  frequently  fall 
down  chimneys,  perhaps  in  attempting  to  get  at  these 
nestlings. 

The  swallow  lays  from  four  to  six  white  eggs,  dotted 

25  with  red  specks;  and  brings  out  her  first  brood  about  the 
last  week  in  June,  or  the  first  week  in  July.  The  pro- 
gressive method  by  which  the  young  are  introduced  into 
life  is  very  amusing :  first,  they  emerge  from  the  shaft  with 
difficulty  enough,  and  often  fall  down  into  the  rooms  below : 

30  for  a  day  or  so  they  are  fed  on  the  chimney-top,  and  then 
are  conducted  to  the  dead  leafless  bough  of  some  tree, 
where,  sitting  in  a  row,  they  are  attended  with  great 
assiduity,  and  may  then  be  called  perchers.  In  a  day  or 
two  more  they  become  flyers,  but  are  still  unable  to  take 


310  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

their  own  food;  therefore  they  play  about  near  the  place 
where  the  dams  are  hawking  for  flies;  and  when  a  mouth- 
ful is  collected,  at  a  certain  signal  given,  the  dam  and  the 
nestling  advance,  rising  toward  each  other,  and  meeting 
at  an  angle;  the  young  one  all  the  while  uttering  such  a  5 
little  quick  note  of  gratitude  and  complacency,  that  a 
person  must  have  paid  very  little  regard  to  the  wonders  of 
nature  that  has  not  often  remarked  this  feat. 

The  dam  betakes  herself  immediately  to  the  business 
of  a  second  brood  as  soon  as  she  is  disengaged  from  her  10 
first;  which  at  once  associates  with  the  first  broods  of 
house-martins;  and  with  them  congregates,  clustering 
on  sunny  roofs,,  towers,  and  trees.  This  hirundo  brings 
out  her  second  brood  toward  the  middle  and  end  of 
August.  15 

All  the  summer  long  is  the  swallow  a  most  instructive 
pattern  of  unwearied  industry  and  affection;  for,  from 
morning  to  night,  while  there  is  a  family  to  be  supported, 
she  spends  the  whole  day  in  skimming  close  to  the  ground, 
and  exerting  the  most  sudden  turns  and  quick  evolutions.  20 
Avenues,  and  long  walks  under  hedges,  and  pasture-fields, 
and  mown  meadows  where  cattle  graze,  are  her  delight, 
especially  if  there  are  trees  interspersed;  because  in  such 
spots  insects  most  abound.  When  a  fly  is  taken  a  smart 
snap  from  her  bill  is  heard,  resembling  the  noise  at  the  25 
shutting  of  a  watch-case;  but  the  motion  of  the  mandibles 
is  too  quick  for  the  eye. 

The  swallow,  probably  the  male  bird,  is  the  excubitor 
to  house-martins,  and  other  little  birds,  announcing  the 
approach  of  birds  of  prey.  For  as  soon  as  an  hawk  ap-  30 
pears,  with  a  shrill  alarming  note  he  calls  all  the  swallows 
and  martins  about  him;  who  pursue  in  a  body,  and  buffet 
and  strike  their  enemy  till  they  have  driven  him  from  the 
village,  darting  down  from  above  on  his  back,  and  rising 


DESCRIPTION  311 

in  a  perpendicular  line  in  perfect  security.  This  bird  also 
will  sound  the  alarm,  and  strike  at  cats  when  they  climb 
on  the  roofs  of  houses,  or  otherwise  approach  the  nests. 
Each  species  of  hirundo  drinks  as  it  flies  along,  sipping 
5  the  surface  of  the  water;  but  the  swallow  alone,  in  general, 
washes  on  the  wing,  by  dropping  into  a  pool  for  many 
times  together:  in  very  hot  weather  house-martins  and 
bank-martins  dip  and  wash  a  little. 

The  swallow  is  a  delicate  songster,  and  in  soft  sunny 

10  weather  sings  both  perching  and  flying;  on  trees  in  a 
kind  of  concert,  and  on  chimney-tops:  is  also  a  bold 
flyer,  ranging  to  distant  downs  and  commons  even  in 
windy  weather,  which  the  other  species  seem  much  to 
dislike;   nay,   even  frequenting  exposed   sea-port  towns, 

15  and  making  little  excursions  over  the  salt  water.  Horse- 
men on  wide  downs  are  often  closely  attended  by  a  little 
party  of  swallows  for  miles  together,  which  plays  before 
and  behind  them,  sweeping  around,  and  collecting  all  the 
skulking  insects  that  are  roused  by  the  trampling  of  the 

20  horses'  feet:  when  the  wind  blows  hard,  without  this  ex- 
pedient, they  are  often  forced  to  settle  to  pick  up  their 
lurking  prey. 

This  species  feeds  much  on  little  coleoptera,  as  well  as  on 
gnats  and  flies :  and  often  settles  on  dug  ground,  or  paths 

25  for  gravels  to  grind  and  digest  its  food.  Before  they  depart 
for  some  weeks,  to  a  bird,  they  forsake  houses  and  chim- 
neys, and  roost  in  trees;  and  usually  withdraw  about  the 
beginning  of  October;  though  some  few  stragglers  may 
appear  on  at  times  till  the  first  week  in  November. 

30  Some  few  pairs  haunt  the  new  and  open  streets  of 
London  next  the  fields,  but  do  not  enter,  like  the  house- 
martin,  the  close  and  crowded  parts  of  the  city. 

Both  male  and  female  are  distinguished  from  their  con- 
geners by  the  length  and  forkedness  of  their  tails.    They 


312  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

are  undoubtedly  the  most  nimble  of  all  the  species:  and 
when  the  male  pursues  the  female  in  amorous  chase,  they 
then  go  beyond  their  usual  speed,  and  exert  a  rapidity 
almost  too  quick  for  the  eye  to  follow. 

After  this  circumstantial  detail  of  the  life  and  discerning  5 
(rropyrj    of   the   swallow,   I   shall  add,  for  your  farther 
amusement,  an  anecdote  or  two  not  much   in  favor  of 
her  sagacity: 

A  certain  swallow  built  for  two  years  together  on  the 
handles  of  a  pair  of  garden-shears,  that  were  stuck  up   lo 
against  the  boards  in  an  out-house,  and  therefore  must 
have    her    nest   spoiled   whenever   that    implement   was 
wanted:  and,  what  is  stranger  still,  another  bird  of  the 
same  species  built  its  nest  on  the  wings  and  body  of  an 
owl  that  happened  by  accident  to  hang  dead  and  dry   15 
from  the  rafter  of  a  barn.     This  owl,  with  the  nest  on  its 
wings,  and  with  eggs  in  the  nest,  was  brought  as  a  curiosity 
worthy  the  most  elegant  private  museum  in  Great  Britain. 
The  owner,  struck  with  the  oddity  of  the  sight,  furnished 
the  bringer  with  a  large  shell,  or  conch,  desiring  him  to  fix  20 
it  just  where  the  owl  hung:  the  person  did  as  he  was 
ordered,  and  the  following  year  a  pair,  probably  the  same 
pair,  built  their  nest  in  the  conch,  and  laid  their  eggs. 

The  owl  and  the  conch  make  a  strange  grotesque  ap- 
pearance, and  are  not  the  least  curious  specimens  in  that  25 
wonderful  collection  of  art  and  nature. 

Thus  is  instinct  in  animals,  taken  the  least  out  of  its 
way,  an  undistinguishing,  limited  faculty;  and  blind  to 
every   circumstance   that   does   not   immediately   respect 
self-preservation,  or  lead  at  once  to  the  propagation  or  30 
support  of  their  species. 

I  am. 

With  all  respect,  etc.,  etc. 


DESCRIPTION  313 

THE  TORTOISE* 

Gilbert  White 
LETTER  XIII 

TO    THE    HONOURABLE    DAINES   BARRINGTON 

April    12,    1772. 
Dear  Sir: 
While  I  was  in  Sussex  last  autumn  my  residence  was  at 
the  village  near  Lewes,  from  whence  I  had  formerly  the 

5  pleasure  of  writing  to  you.  On  the  first  of  November,  I 
remarked  that  the  old  tortoise,  formerly  mentioned,  began 
first  to  dig  the  ground  in  order  to  the  forming  its  hyber- 
naculum,  which  it  had  fixed  on  just  beside  a  great  tuft  of 
hepaticas.     It  scrapes  out  the  ground  with  its  forefeet,  and 

10  throws  it  up  over  its  back  with  its  hind;  but  the  motion  of 
its  legs  is  ridiculously  slow,  little  exceeding  the  hour-hand 
of  a  clock.  Nothing  can  be  more  assiduous  than  this 
creature  night  and  day  in  scooping  the  earth,  and  forcing 
its  great  body  into  the  cavity;  but,  as  the  noons  of  that 

15  season  proved  unusually  warm  and  sunny,  it  was  con- 
tinually interrupted,  and  called  forth  by  the  heat  in  the 
middle  of  the  day;  and  though  I  continued  there  till  the 
thirteenth  of  November,  yet  the  work  remained  unfinished. 
Harsher    weather,    and    frosty    mornings,    would    have 

20  quickened  its  operations.  No  part  of  its  behavior  ever 
struck  me  more  than  the  extreme  timidity  it  always  ex- 
presses with  regard  to  rain;  for  though  it  has  a  shell 
that  would  secure  it  against  the  wheel  of  a  loaded  cart, 
yet  does  it  discover  as  much  solicitude  about  rain  as  a 
*0p.    cit.     pp.  129-30,    220-21 


314  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

lady  dressed  in  all  her  best  attire,  shuffling  away  on  the 
first  sprinklings,  and  running  its  head  up  in  a  corner.  If 
attended  to,  it  becomes  an  excellent  weather-glass;  for  as 
sure  as  it  walks  elate,  and  as  it  were  on  tiptoe,  feeding 
with  great  earnestness  in  a  morning,  so  sure  will  it  rain  5 
before  night.  It  is  totally  a  diurnal  animal,  and  never 
pretends  to  stir  after  it  becomes  dark.  The  tortoise,  like 
other  reptiles,  has  an  arbitrary  stomach  as  well  as  lungs; 
and  can  refrain  from  eating  as  well  as  breathing  for  a 
great  part  of  the  year.  When  first  awakened  it  eats  10 
nothing;  nor  again  in  the  autumn  before  it  retires;  through 
the  height  of  the  summer  it  feeds  voraciously,  devouring 
all  the  food  that  comes  in  its  way.  I  was  much  taken 
with  its  sagacity  in  discerning  those  that  do  it  kind  offices; 
for,  as  soon  as  the  good  old  lady  comes  in  sight  who  has  15 
waited  on  it  for  more  than  thirty  years,  it  hobbles  toward 
its  benefactress  with  awkward  alacrity;  but  remains  inat- 
tentive to  strangers.  Thus  not  only  ''tlie  ox  knoweth  his 
owner,  and  the  ass  his  master's  criby "  but  the  most  abject 
reptile  and  torpid  of  beings  distinguishes  the  hand  that  20 
feeds  it,  and  is  touched  with  the  feelings  of  gratitude! 

I    am,    etc.,  etc. 
P.  S.  In  about  three  days  after  I  left  Sussex  the  tortoise 
retired  into  the  ground  under  the  hepatica. 


LETTER  L 

TO  THE   HONOURABLE   DAINES  BARRINGTON 

Selborne,  April  21,  1780.   25 
Dear  Sir: 
The  old  Sussex  tortoise,  that  I  have  mentioned  to  you  so 
often,  is  become  my  property.     I  dug  it  out  of  its  winter 


DESCRIPTION  315 

dormitory  in  March  last,  when  it  was  enough  awakened  to 
express  its  resentments  by  hissing;  and,  packing  it  in  a  box 
with  earth,  carried  it  eighty  miles  in  post-chaises.  The 
rattle  and  hurry  of  the  journey  so  perfectly  roused  it  that, 

5  when  I  turned  it  out  on  a  border,  it  walked  twice  down  to 
the  bottom  of  my  garden;  however,  in  the  evening,  the 
weather  being  cold,  it  buried  itself  in  the  loose  mould,  and 
continues  still  concealed. 

As  it  will  be  under  my  eye,  I  shall  now  have  an  oppor- 

10  tunity  of  enlarging  my  observations  on  its  mode  of  life, 
and  propensities;  and  perceive  already  that,  toward  the 
time  of  coming  forth,  it  opens  a  breathing  place  in  the 
ground  near  its  head,  requiring,  I  conclude,  a  freer  respira- 
tion, as  it  becomes  more  alive.     This  creature  not  only 

15  goes  under  the  earth  from  the  middle  of  November  to  the 
middle  of  April,  but  sleeps  great  part  of  the  summer;  for  it 
goes  to  bed  in  the  longest  days  at  four  in  the  afternoon,  and 
often  does  not  stir  in  the  morning  till  late.  Besides,  it 
retires  to  rest  for  every  shower;  and  does  not  move  at  all  in 

20  wet  days. 

When  one  reflects  on  the  state  of  this  strange  being,  it 
is  a  matter  of  wonder  to  find  that  Providence  should 
bestow  such  a  profusion  of  days,  such  a  seeming  waste 
of  longevity,  on  a  reptile  that  appears  to  relish  it  so  little 

25  as  to  squander  more  than  two-thirds  of  its  existence  in  a 
joyless  stupor,  and  be  lost  to  all  sensation  for  months 
together  in  the  profoundest  of  slumbers. 

While  I  was  writing  this  letter,  a  moist  and  warm 
afternoon,  with  the  thermometer   at   50,   brought  forth 

30  troops  of  shell-snails;  and,  at  the  same  juncture,  the 
tortoise  heaved  up  the  mould  and  put  out  its  head;  and 
the  next  morning  came  forth,  as  it  were  raised  from  the 
dead;  and  walked  about  till  four  in  the  afternoon.  This 
was  a  curious  coincidence !    a  very  amusing  occurrence !  to 


316  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

see  such  a  similarity  of  feelings  between  the  two  ^eploucoi  f 
for  so  the  Greeks  call  both  the  shell-snail  and  the  tortoise. 
Summer  birds  are,  this  cold  and  backward  spring,  un- 
usually late:  I  have  seen  but  one  swallow  yet.  This 
conformity  with  the  weather  convinces  me  more  and 
more  that  they  sleep  in  the  winter. 

Suggestions:  These  are  examples  of  description  from  a 
series  of  observations  very  close  and  detailed,  if  not  thoroughly 
scientific  from  a  modern  point  of  view.  Note  the  rather  "old- 
fashioned"  effect  of  the  style.  To  what  peculiarities  of  words 
and  sentences  is  this  due  ?  Note  the  charmingly  sympathetic 
treatment  of  "The  Tortoise." 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

The  habits  of  some  bird,  or  animal,  or  insect  with  which 
you  are   familiar. 

An  account  of  some  pet  animal  of  your  childhood. 


THE  PLAINS  OF  PATAGONIA* 
W.  H.  Hudson 

NEAR  the  end  of  Darwin's  famous  narrative  of  the 
voyage  of  the  Beagle  there  is  a  passage  which,  for 
me  has  a  very  special  interest  and  significance.  It  is  as 
follows,  and  the  italicization  is  mine:  "In  calling  up  lo 
images  of  the  past,  I  find  the  plains  of  Patagonia  frequently 
cross  before  my  eyes;  yet  these  plains  are  pronounced  by 
all  to  be  most  wretched  and  useless.  They  are  char- 
acterized only  by  negative  possessions;  without  habita- 
tions, without  water,  without  trees,  without  mountains,  15 
they  support  only  a  few  dwarf  plants.    Why,  tlien — and  tlie 

♦Reprinted  from  Idle  Days  in  Patagonia^  Chapter  13,  by  permission 
of  D.  Appleton  &  Company. 


DESCRIPTION  317 

case  is  not  peculiar  to  myself — have  these  arid  wastes  taken 
so  firm  possession  of  my  mind  ?  Why  have  not  the  still 
more  level,  the  greener  and  more  fertile  pampas,  which  are 
serviceable  to  mankind,  produced  an  equal  impression? 
5  I  can  scarcely  analyze  these  feelings,  but  it  must  be  partly 
owing  to  the  free  scope  given  to  the  imagination.  The 
plains  of  Patagonia  are  boundless,  for  they  are  scarcely 
practicable,  and  hence  unknown;  they  bear  the  stamp  of 
having  thus  lasted  for  ages,  and  there  appears  no  limit  to 

10  their  duration  through  future  time.  If,  as  the  ancients 
supposed,  the  flat  earth  was  surrounded  by  an  impassable 
breadth  of  water,  or  by  deserts  heated  to  an  intolerable 
excess,  who  would  not  look  at  these  last  boundaries  to 
man's  knowledge  with  deep  but  ill-defined  sensations.^" 

15  That  he  did  not  in  this  passage  hit  on  the  right  explana- 
tion of  the  sensations  he  experienced  in  Patagonia,  and  of 
the  strength  of  the  impressions  it  made  on  his  mind,  I  am 
quite  convinced;  for  the  thing  is  just  as  true  of  to-day  as 
of  the  time,  in  1836,  when  he  wrote  that  the  case  was  not 

20  peculiar  to  himself.  Yet  since  that  date — which  now, 
thanks  to  Darwin,  seems  so  remote  to  the  naturalist — 
those  desolate  regions  have  ceased  to  be  impracticable, 
and,  although  still  uninhabited  and  uninhabitable,  except 
to  a  few  nomads,  they  are  no  longer  unknown.     During 

25  the  last  twenty  years  the  country  has  been  crossed  in 
various  directions,  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Andes,  and 
from  the  Rio  Negro  to  the  Straits  of  Magellan,  and  has 
been  found  all  barren.  The  mysterious  illusive  city, 
peopled  by  whites,  which  was  long  believed  to  exist  in  the 

30  unknown  interior,  in  a  valley  called  Trapalanda,  is  to 
moderns  a  myth,  a  mirage  of  the  mind,  as  little  to  the 
traveler's  imagination  as  the  glittering  capitol  of  great 
Manoa,  which  Alonzo  Pizarro  and  his  false  friend  Orellana 
failed  to  discover.     The  traveler  of  to-day  really  expects 


318  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

to  see  nothing  more  exciting  than  a  soHtary  huanaco 
keeping  watch  on  a  hill-top,  and  a  few  gray-plumaged 
rheas  flying  from  him,  and,  possibly,  a  band  of  long- 
haired, roving  savages,  with  their  faces  painted  black  and 
red.  Yet,  in  spite  of  accurate  knowledge,  the  old  charm  5 
still  exists  in  all  its  freshness;  and  after  all  the  discomforts 
and  sufferings  endured  in  a  desert  cursed  with  eternal 
barrenness,  the  returned  traveler  finds  in  after  years  that 
it  still  keeps  its  hold  on  him,  that  it  shines  brighter  in 
memory,  and  is  dearer  to  him  than  any  other  region  he  10 
may  have  visited. 

We  know  that  the  more  deeply  our  feelings  are  moved 
by  any  scene  the  more  vivid  and  lasting  will  its  image  be 
in  memory — a  fact  which  accounts  for  the  comparatively 
unfailing  character  of  the  images  that  date  back  to  the  15 
period  of  childhood,  when  we  are  most  emotional.  Judg- 
ing from  my  own  case,  I  believe  that  we  have  here  the 
secret  of  the  persistence  of  Patagonian  images,  and  their 
frequent  recurrence  in  the  minds  of  many  who  have 
visited  that  gray,  monotonous,  and,  in  one  sense,  eminently  20 
uninteresting  region.  It  is  not  the  effect  of  the  unknown, 
it  is  not  imagination;  it  is  that  nature  in  these  desolate 
scenes,  for  a  reason  to  be  guessed  at  by  and  by,  moves  us 
more  deeply  than  in  others.  In  describing  his  rambles 
in  one  of  the  most  desolate  spots  in  Patagonia,  Darwin  25 
remarks:  "Yet,  in  passing  over  these  scenes,  without  one 
bright  object  near,  an  ill-defined  but  strong  sense  of 
pleasure  is  vividly  excited. "  When  I  recall  a  Patagonian 
scene,  it  comes  before  me  so  complete  in  all  its  vast  extent, 
with  all  its  details  so  clearly  outlined,  that,  if  I  were  30 
actually  gazing  on  it,  I  could  scarcely  see  it  more  dis- 
tinctly; yet  other  scenes,  even  those  that  were  beautiful 
and  sublime,  with  forest,  and  ocean,  and  mountain,  and 
over  all  the  deep  blue  sky  and  brilliant  sunshine  of  the 


DESCRIPTION  319 

tropics,  appear  no  longer  distinct  and  entire  in  memory, 
and  only  become  more  broken  and  clouded  if  any  attempt 
is  made  to  regard  them  attentively.  Here  and  there  I  see 
a  wooded  mountain,   a  grove  of  palms,  a  flowery  tree, 

5  green  waves  dashing  on  a  rock  shore — nothirig  but  isolated 
patches  of  bright  color,  the  parts  of  the  picture  that  have 
not  faded  on  a  great  blurred  canvas,  or  series  of  can- 
vases. These  last  are  images  of  scenes  which  were  looked 
on   with  wonder  and   admiration — but  the  gray,  monot- 

[0  onous  solitude  woke  other  and  deeper  feelings,  and  in  that 
mental  state  the  scene  was  indelibly  impressed  on  the 
mind. 

I  spent  the  greater  part  of  one  winter  at  a  point  on  the 
Rio  Negro,  seventy  or  eighty  miles  from  the  sea,  where  the 

L5  valley  on  my  side  of  the  water  was  about  five  miles  wide. 
The  valley  alone  was  habitable,  where  there  was  water  for 
man  and  beast,  and  a  thin  soil  producing  grass  and  grain ; 
it  is  perfectly  level,  and  ends  abruptly  at  the  foot  of  the 
bank  or  terrace-like  formation  of  the  higher  barren  plateau. 

20  It  was  my  custom  to  go  out  every  morning  on  horseback 
with  my  gun,  and,  followed  by  one  dog,  to  ride  away  from 
the  valley;  and  no  sooner  would  I  climb  the  terrace  and 
plunge  into  the  gray  universal  thicket,  than  I  would  find 
myself  as  completely  alone  and  cut  off  from  all  sight  and 

25  sound  of  human  occupancy  as  if  five  hundred  instead  of 
only  five  miles  separated  me  from  the  hidden  green  valley 
and  river.  So  wild  and  solitary  and  remote  seemed  that 
gray  waste,  stretching  away  into  infinitude,  a  waste  untrod- 
den by  man,  and  where  the  wild  animals  are  so  few  that 

30  they  have  made  no  discoverable  path  in  the  wilderness 
of  thorns.  There  I  might  have  dropped  down  and  died, 
and  my  flesh  been  devoured  by  birds,  and  my  bones 
bleached  white  in  sun  and  wind,  and  no  person  would 
have  found  them,  and  it  would  have  been  forgotten  that 


320  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

one  had  ridden  forth  in  the  morning  and  had  not  returned. 
Or  if,  like  the  few  wild  animals  there — puma,  huanaco, 
and  hare-like  dolichotis,  or  Darwin's  rhea  and  the  crested 
tinamou  among  the  birds — I  had  been  able  to  exist  without 
water,  I  might  have  made  myself  a  hermitage  of  brush-  5 
wood  or  dug-out  in  the  side  of  a  cliff,  and  dwelt  there  until 
I  had  grown  gray  as  the  stones  and  trees  around  me,  and 
no  human  foot  would  have  stumbled  on  my  hiding- 
place. 

Not  once,  nor  twice,  nor  thrice,  but  day  after  day  I  10 
returned  to  this  solitude,  going  to  it  in  the  morning  as  if  to 
attend  a  festival,  and  leaving  it  only  when  hunger  and 
thirst  and  the  westering  sun  compelled  me.     And  yet  I 
had  no  object  in  going — no  motive  which  could  be  put 
into  words;  for  although  I  carried  a  gun,  there  was  nothing  15 
to  shoot — the  shooting  was  all  left  behind  in  the  valley. 
Sometimes  a  dolichotis,  starting  up  at  my  approach,  flashed 
for  one  moment  on  my  sight,  to  vanish  the  next  moment 
in  the  continuous  thicket;  or  a  covey  of  tinamous  sprang 
rocket-like  into  the  air,  and  fled  away  with  long  wailing  20 
note  and  loud  whir  of  wings;  or  on  some  distant  hillside  a 
bright  patch  of  yellow,  of  a  deer  that  was  watching  me, 
appeared    and    remained    motionless   for   two    or   three 
minutes.     But  the  animals  were  few,  and  sometimes  I 
would  pass  an  entire  day  without  seeing  one  mammal,   25 
and  perhaps  not  more  than  a  dozen  birds  of  any  size.     The 
weather  at  that  time  was  cheerless,  generally  with  a  gray 
film  of  cloud  spread  over  the  sky,  and  a  bleak  wind,  often 
cold  enough  to  make  my  bridle  hand  feel  quite  numb. 
Moreover,  it  was  not  possible  to  enjoy  a  canter;  the  bushes  30 
grew  so  close  together  that  it  was  as  much  as  one  could  do 
to  pass  through  at  a  walk  without  brushing  against  them ; 
and  at  this  slow  pace,  which  would  have  seemed  intolerable 
in  other  circumstances,  I  would  ride  about  for  hours  at  a 


DESCRIPTION  S21 

stretch.  In  the  scene  itself  there  was  nothing  to  delight 
the  eye.  Everywhere  through  the  Hght,  gray  mould,  gray 
as  ashes  and  formed  by  the  ashes  of  myriads  of  generations 
of  dead  trees,  where  the  wind  had  blown  on  it,  or  the  rain 
5  had  washed  it  away,  the  underlying  yellow  sand  appeared, 
and  the  old  ocean-polished  pebbles,  dull  red,  and  gray,  and 
green,  and  yellow.  On  arriving  at  a  hill,  I  would  slowly 
ride  to  its  summit,  and  stand  there  to  survey  the  prospect. 
On  every  side  it  stretched  away  in  great  undulations;  but 

10  the  undulations  were  wild  and  irregular;  the  hills  were 
rounded  and  cone-shaped;  they  were  solitary  and  in 
groups  and  ranges;  some  sloped  gently,  others  were  ridge- 
like and  stretched  away  in  league-long  terraces,  with  other 
terraces  beyond;  and  all  alike  were  clothed  in  the  gray 

15  everlasting  thorny  vegetation.  How  gray  it  all  was! 
hardly  less  so  near  at  hand  than  on  the  haze-wrapped 
horizon,  where  the  hills  were  dim  and  the  outline  blurred 
by  distance.  Sometimes  I  would  see  the  large  eagle-like, 
white-breasted   buzzard,   Buteo  erythronotus,   perched   on 

20  the  summit  of  a  bush  half  a  mile  away;  and  so  long  as  it 
would  continue  stationed  motionless  before  me  my  eyes 
would  remain  involuntarily  fixed  on  it,  just  as  one  keeps 
his  eyes  on  a  bright  light  shining  in  the  gloom;  for  the 
whiteness  of  the  hawk  seemed  to  exercise  a  fascinating 

25  power  on  the  vision,  so  surpassingly  bright  was  it  by  con- 
trast in  the  midst  of  that  universal  unrelieved  grayness. 
Descending  from  my  lookout,  I  would  take  up  my  aimless 
wanderings  again,  and  visit  other  elevations  to  gaze  on  the 
same  landscape  from  another  point;  and  so  on  for  hours, 

30  and  at  noon  I  would  dismount  and  sit  or  lie  on  my  folded 
poncho  for  an  hour  or  longer.  One  day,  in  these  rambles, 
I  discovered  a  small  grove  composed  of  twenty  to  thirty 
trees,  about  eighteen  feet  high,  and  taller  than  the  sur- 
rounding  trees.     They   were   growing   at   a   convenient 


322  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

distance  apart,  and  had  evidently  been  resorted  to  by  a 
herd  of  deer  or  other  wild  animals  for  a  very  long  time,  for 
the  boles  were  polished  to  a  glassy  smoothness  with  much 
rubbing,  and  the  ground  beneath  was  trodden  to  a  floor  of 
clean,  loose  yellow  sand.  This  grove  was  on  a  hill  difi^er-  5 
ing  in  shape  from  other  hills  in  its  neighborhood,  so  that  it 
was  easy  for  me  to  find  it  on  other  occasions;  and  after  a 
time  I  made  a  point  of  finding  and  using  it  as  a  resting- 
place  every  day  at  noon.  I  did  not  ask  myself  why  I  made 
choice  of  that  one  spot,  sometimes  going  miles  out  of  my  10 
way  to  sit  there,  instead  of  sitting  down  under  any  one  of 
the  millions  of  trees  and  bushes  covering  the  country,  on 
any  other  hillside.  I  thought  nothing  at  all  about  it,  but 
acted  unconsciously;  only  afterward,  when  revolving  the 
subject,  it  seemed  to  me  that  after  having  rested  there  15 
once,  each  time  I  wished  to  rest  again  the  wish  became 
associated  with  the  image  of  that  particular  clump  of  trees, 
with  polished  stems  and  clean  bed  of  sand  beneath ;  and  in 
a  short  time  I  formed  a  habit  of  returning,  animal-like,  to 
repose  at  that  same  spot.  20 

It  was  perhaps  a  mistake  to  say  that  I  would  sit  down 
and  rest,  since  I  was  never  tired:  and  yet  without  being 
tired,  that  noon-day  pause,  during  which  I  sat  for  an  hour 
without  moving,  was  strangely  grateful.  All  day  the 
silence  seemed  grateful,  it  was  very  perfect,  very  profound.  25 
There  were  no  insects,  and  the  only  bird  sound — a  feeble 
chirp  of  alarm  emitted  by  a  small  skulking  wrenlike 
species — ^was  not  heard  oftener  than  two  or  three  times  an 
hour.  The  only  sounds  as  I  rode  were  the  muflfled  hoof- 
strokes  of  my  horse,  scratching  of  twigs  against  my  boot  or  30 
saddle-flap,  and  the  low  panting  of  the  dog.  And  it  seemed 
to  be  a  relief  to  escape  even  from  these  sounds  when  I 
dismounted  and  sat  down:  for  in  a  few  moments  the  dog 
would  stretch  his  head  out  on  his  paws  and  go  to  sleep, 


DESCRIPIION  323 

and  then  there  would  be  no  sound,  not  even  the  rustle  of  a 
leaf.  For  unless  the  wind  blows  strong  there  is  no  flutter- 
ing motion  and  no  whisper  in  the  small  stiff  undeciduous 
leaves;  and  the  bushes  stand  unmoving  as  if  carved  out  of 
5  stone.  One  day  while  listening  to  the  silence,  it  occurred 
to  my  mind  to  wonder  what  the  effect  would  be  if  I  were  to 
shout  aloud.  This  seemed  at  the  time  a  horrible  sug- 
gestion of  fancy,  a  "lawless  and  uncertain  thought"  which 
almost  made  me  shudder,  and  I  was  anxious  to  dismiss  it 

10  quickly  from  my  mind.  But  during  those  solitary  days  it 
was  a  rare  thing  for  any  thought  to  cross  my  mind ;  animal 
forms  did  not  cross  my  vision  or  bird-voices  assail  my 
hearing  more  rarely.  In  that  novel  state  of  mind  I  was  in, 
thought  had  become  impossible.     Elsewhere  I  had  always 

15  been  able  to  think  most  freely  on  horseback;  and  on  the 
pampas,  even  in  the  most  lonely  places,  my  mind  was 
always  most  active  when  I  traveled  at  a  swinging  gallop. 
This  was  doubtless  habit;  but  now,  with  a  horse  under  me, 
I  had  become  incapable  of  reflection:  my  mind  had  sud- 

20  denly  transformed  itself  from  a  thinking  machine  into  a 
machine  for  some  other  unknown  purpose.  To  think  was 
like  setting  in  motion  a  noisy  engine  in  my  brain;  and  there 
was  something  there  which  bade  me  be  still,  and  I  was 
forced  to  obey.     My  state  was  one  of  suspense  and  watch- 

25  fulness;  yet  I  had  no  expectation  of  meeting  with  an 
adventure,  and  felt  as  free  from  apprehension  as  I  feel 
now  when  sitting  in  a  room  in  London.  The  change  in 
me  was  just  as  great  and  wonderful  as  if  I  had  changed  my 
identity  for  that  of  another  man  or  animal ;  but  at  the  time 

30  I  was  powerless  to  wonder  at  or  speculate  about  it;  the 
state  seemed  familiar  rather  than  strange,  and  although 
accompanied  by  a  strong  feeling  of  elation,  I  did  not 
know  it — did  not  know  that  something  had  come  be- 
tween me  and  my  intellect — until  I  lost  it  and  returned 


324  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

to  my  former  self — to  thinking,  and  the  old  insipid  exist- 
ence. 

Such  changes  in  us,  however  brief  in  duration  they  may 
be,  and  in  most  cases  they  are  very  brief,  but  which  so  long 
as  they  last  seem  to  affect  us  down  to  the  very  roots  of  our  5 
being,  and  come  as  a  great  surprise — a  revelation  of  an 
unfamiliar  and  unsuspected  nature  hidden  under  the 
nature  we  are  conscious  of — can  only  be  attributed  to  an 
instantaneous  reversion  to  the  primitive  and  wholly 
savage  mental  conditions 10 

It  is  true  that  we  are  eminently  adaptive,  that  we  have 
created,  and  exist  in  some  sort  of  harmony  with  new  con- 
ditions, widely  different  from  those  to  which  we  were 
originally  adapted;  but  the  old  harmony  was  infinitely 
more  perfect  than  the  new,  and  if  there  be  such  a  thing  as  15 
historical  memory  in  us,  it  is  not  strange  that  the  sweetest 
moment  in  any  life,  pleasant  or  dreary,  should  be  when 
Nature  draws  near  to  it,  and,  taking  up  her  neglected 
instrument,  plays  a  fragment  of  some  ancient  melody,  long 
unheard  on  the  earth.  20 

It  might  be  asked:  If  nature  has  at  times  this  peculiar 
effect  on  us,  restoring  instantaneously  the  old  vanished 
harmony  between  organism  and  environment,  why  should 
it  be  experienced  in  a  greater  degree  in  the  Patagonian 
desert  than  in  other  solitary  places — a  desert  which  is  25 
waterless,  where  animal  voices  are  seldom  heard,  and 
vegetation  is  gray  instead  of  green?  I  can  only  suggest 
a  reason  for  the  effect  being  so  much  greater  in  my  own 
case.  In  subtropical  woods  and  thickets,  and  in  wild 
forests  in  temperate  regions,  the  cheerful  verdure  and  30 
bright  colors  of  flower  and  insects,  if  we  have  acquired  a 
habit  of  looking  closely  at  these  things,  and  the  melody 
and  noises  of  bird-life  engage  the  senses;  there  is  move- 
ment and  brightness;  new  forms,  animal  and  vegetable, 


DESCRIPTION  325 

are  continually  appearing,  curiosity  and  expectation  are 
excited,  and  the  mind  is  so  much  occupied  with  novel 
objects  that  the  effect  of  wild  nature  in  its  entirety  is 
minimized.     In  Patagonia  the  monotony  of  the  plains,  or 

5  expanse  of  low  hills,  the  universal  unrelieved  grayness  of 
everything,  and  the  absence  of  animal  forms  and  objects 
new  to  the  eye,  leave  the  mind  open  and  free  to  receive  an 
impression  of  visible  nature  as  a  whole.  One  gazes  on  the 
prospect  as  on  the  sea,  for  it  stretches  away  sealike  without 

10  change,  into  infinitude;  but  without  the  sparkle  of  water, 
the  changes  of  hue  which  shadows  and  sunlight  and  near- 
ness and  distance  give,  and  motion  of  waves  and  white 
flash  of  foam.  It  has  a  look  of  antiquity,  of  desolation,  of 
eternal  peace,  of  a  desert  that  has  been  a  desert  from  of 

15  old  and  will  continue  a  desert  forever;  and  we  know  that 
its  only  human  inhabitants  are  a  few  wandering  savages, 
who  live  by  hunting  as  their  progenitors  have  done  for 
thousands  of  years.  Again,  in  fertile  savannahs  and 
pampas  there  may  appear  no  signs  of  human  occupancy, 

20  but  the  traveler  knows  that  eventually  the  advancing  tide 
of  humanity  will  come  with  its  flocks  and  herds,  and  the 
ancient  silence  and  desolation  will  be  no  more;  and  this 
thought  is  like  human  companionship,  and  mitigates  the 
effect  of  nature's  wildness  on  the  spirit.     In  Patagonia  no 

25  such  thought  or  dream  of  the  approaching  changes  to  be 
wrought  by  human  agency  can  affect  the  mind.  There  is 
no  water  there,  the  arid  soil  is  sand  and  gravel — pebbles 
rounded  by  the  action  of  ancient  seas,  before  Europe  was; 
and  nothing  grows  except  the  barren  things  that  nature 

30  loves — thorns,  and  a  few  woody  herbs,  and  scattered  tufts 
of  wiry,  bitter  grass. 

Suggestions:  The  quiet  yet  wonderfully  vivid  effect  of  this 
description  should  be  noted.  To  what  characteristics  is  this  effect 
due.^     What  is  the  cause  of  the  writer's  mood.?     How  does  he 


326  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

explain. his  impression?     Try  to  describe,  with  equal  clearness, 
the  subject  of  your  own  theme. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS 

A  state  of  mind  in  which  I  once  foxmd  myself. 

An  unexpected  fright,   and  how  I  felt. 

Homesickness. 

Before  my  oration. 

On  the  witness  stand. 

My  interview  with  the  President. 

Before  the  race. 

When  I  thought  I  heard  a  burglar. 

On  receiving  a   telegram. 

Before  we  went  into  the  championship  game. 

A  runaway. 

Afraid  of  the  dark. 


THE  MASTER  OF  BALLANTRAE* 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson 

BUT  the  business  of  landing  was  briskly  carried  through; 
and  presently  the  baggage  was  all  tumbled  on  shore, 
the  boat  on  its  return  voyage  to  the  lugger,  and  the  pas- 
senger standing  alone  upon  the  point  of  rock,  a  tall  slender 
figure  of  a  gentleman,  habited  in  black,  with  a  sword  by  5 
his  side/and  a  walking  cane  upon  his  wrist.  As  he  so 
stood,  he  waved  the  cane  to  Captain  Crail  by  way  of 
salutation,  with  something  both  of  grace  and  mockery  that 
wrote  the  gesture  deeply  on  my  mind. 

I  was  now  near  enough  to  see  him,  a  very  handsome  IC 
figure  and  countenance,  swarthy,  lean,  long,  with  a  quick, 
alert,  black  look,  as  of  one  who  was  a  fighter  and  accus- 

*  The  Master  of  BaUantrae,  p.  101.     Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,    New 
York,  1897. 


DESCRIPTION  327 

tomed  to  command;  (upon  one  cheek  he  had  a  mole,  not 
unbecoming;  a  large  diamond  sparkled  on  his  hand;  his 
clothes,  although  of  the  one  hue,  were  of  a  French  and 
foppish  design;  his  ruffles,  which  he  wore  longer  than 
common,  of  exquisite  lace;  and  I  wondered  the  more  to 
see  him  in  such  a  guise,  when  he  was  but  newly  landed 
from  a  dirty  smuggling  lugger. 


THE  ANTIQUARY* 

Sir  Walter  Scott 

OUR  youth  .  .  .  amused  himself  ...  by  speculating 
upon  the  occupation  and  character  of  the  personage 
10   who  was  now  come  to  the  coach  office. 

He  was  a  good-looking  man  of  the  age  of  sixty,  perhaps 
older, — but  his  hale  complexion  and  firm  step  announced 
that  years  had  not  impaired  his  strength  or  health.     His 
countenance  was  of  the  true  Scottish  cast,  strongly  marked, 
15   and  rather  harsh  in  features,  with  a  shrewd  and  penetrat- 
ing eye,  and  a  countenance  in  which  habitual  gravity  was 
enlivened  by  a  cast  of  ironical  humor.     His  dress  was 
uniform  and  of  a  color  becoming  his  age  and  gravity;  a 
wig,  well  dressed  and  powdered,  surmounted  by  a  slouched 
20  hat,  had  something  of  a  professional  air.     He  might  be  a 
clergyman,  yet  his  appearance  was  more  that  of  a  man  of 
the  world  than  usually  belongs  to  the  kirk  of  Scotland,  and 
his  first  ejaculation  put  the  matter  beyond  question. 
He  arrived  with  a  hurried  pace,  and,  casting  an  alarmed 
25  glance  toward  the  dial-plate  of  the  church,  then  looking 
at  the  place  where  the  coach  should  have  been,  exclaimed, 
"Deil's  in  it — I  am  too  late  after  all!" 
♦From  The  Antiquary,  Chapter  1. 


328  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

ESTHER  LYON* 

George  Eliot 

ESTHER  bowed  slightly  as  she  walked  across  the 
room  to  fetch  the  candle  and  place  it  near  her  tray. 
Felix  rose  and  bowed,  also  with  an  air  of  indifference, 
which  was  perhaps  exaggerated  by  the  fact  that  he  was 
inwardly  surprised.  The  minister's  daughter  was  not  the  5 
sort  of  person  he  expected.  She  was  quite  incongruous 
with  his  notion  of  ministers'  daughters  in  general;  and 
though  he  had  expected  something  nowise  delightful,  the 
incongruity  repelled  him.  A  very  delicate  scent,  the  faint 
suggestion  of  a  garden,  was  wafted  as  she  went.  He  would  10 
not  observe  her,  but  he  had  a  sense  of  an  elastic  walk,  the 
tread  of  small  feet,  a  long  neck,  and  a  high  crown  of 
shining  brown  plaits  with  curls  that  floated  backward — 
things,  in  short,  that  suggested  a  fine  lady  to  him,  and 
determined  him  to  notice  her  as  little  as  possible.  15 

DINAH  MORRISt 

George  Eliot 

SEVERAL  of  the  men  followed  Ben's  lead,  and  the 
traveler  pushed  his  horse  on  to  the  Green,  as  Dinah 
walked  rather  quickly,  and  in  advance  of  her  companions, 
toward  the  cart  under  the  maple-tree.  While  she  was 
near  Seth's  tall  figure,  she  looked  short,  but  when  she  had  20 
mounted  the  cart,  and  was  away  from  all  comparison,  she 
seemed  above  the  middle  height  of  woman,  though  in 
reality  she  did  not  exceed  it — an  effect  which  was  due  to 

♦From    Felix  Holt,   the  Radical,   Chapter  v. 
fFrom  Adam  Bede,  Chapter  ii. 


DESCRIPTION  329 

the  slimness  of  her  figure,  and  the  simple  Hne  of  her  black 
stuff  dress.  The  stranger  was  struck  with  surprise  as  he 
saw  her  approach  and  mount  the  cart — surprise,  not  so 
much  at  the  feminine  dehcacy  of  her  appearance,  as  at  the 

5  total  absence  of  self-consciousness  in  her  demeanor.  He 
had  made  up  his  mind  to  see  her  advance  with  a  measured 
step,  and  a  demure  solemnity  of  countenance;  he  had  felt 
sure  that  her  face  would  be  mantled  with  the  smile  of 
conscious   saintship,   or  else  charged  with  denunciatory 

10  bitterness.  He  knew  but  two  types  of  Methodist — the 
ecstatic  and  the  bilious.  But  Dinah  walked  as  simply  as  if 
she  were  going  to  market,  and  seemed  as  unconscious  of 
her  outward  appearance  as  a  little  boy:  there  was  no 
blush,  no  tremulousness,  which  said,  "I  know  you  think 

15  me  a  pretty  woman,  too  young  to  preach;"  no  casting  up 
or  down  of  the  eyelids,  no  compression  of  the  lips,  no 
attitude  of  the  arms,  that  said,  "But  you  must  think  of  me 
as  a  saint."  She  held  no  book  in  her  ungloved  hands, 
but  let  them  hang  down  lightly  crossed  before  her,  as  she 

10  stood  and  turned  her  gray  eyes  on  the  people.  There  was 
no  keenness  in  the  eyes;  they  seemed  rather  to  be  shedding 
love  than  making  observations;  they  had  the  liquid  look 
which  tells  that  the  mind  is  full  of  what  it  has  to  give  out, 
rather   than   impressed   by   external   objects.     She   stood 

15  with  her  left  hand  toward  the  descending  sun,  and 
leafy  boughs  screened  her  from  its  rays;  but  in  this 
sober  light  the  delicate  coloring  of  her  face  seemed  to 
gather  a  calm  vividness,  like  flowers  at  evening.  It  was 
a'  small  oval  face,  of   a  uniform  transparent  whiteness, 

50  with  an  egg-like  line  of  cheek  and  chin,  a  full  but  firm 
mouth,  a  delicate  nostril,  and  a  low  perpendicular  brow, 
surmounted  by  a  rising  arch  of  parting  between  smooth 
locks  of  pale  reddish  hair.  The  hair  was  drawn  straight 
back  behind  the  ears,  and  covered,  except  for  an  inch  or 


330  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITIN(^ 

two,  above  the  brow,  by  a  net  Quaker  cap.  The  eyebrows, 
of  the  same  color  as  the  hair,  were  perfectly  horizontal  and 
firmly  pencilled;  the  eyelashes,  though  no  darker,  were 
long  and  abundant;  nothing  was  left  blurred  or  unfinished. 
It  was  one  of  those  faces  that  make  one  think  of  white 
flowers  with  light  touches  of  color  on  their  pure  petals. 
The  eyes  had  no  peculiar  beauty,  beyond  that  of  expres- 
sion; they  looked  so  simple,  so  candid,  so  gravely  loving, 
that  no  accusing  scowl,  no  light  sneer  could  help  melting 
away  before  their  glance.  Joshua  Rann  gave  a  long 
cough,  as  if  he  were  clearing  his  throat  in  order  to  come 
to  a  new  understanding  with  himself;  Chad  Cranage  lifted 
up  his  leather  skull-cap  and  scratched  his 'head;  and 
Wiry  Ben  wondered  how  Seth  had  the  pluck  to  think  of 
courting  her. 

BEATRIX  ESMOND* 

William  Makepeace  Thackeray 

IN  the  hall  of  Walcote  House  ....  is  a  staircase  that 
leads  from  an  open  gallery,  where  are  the  doors  of  the 
sleeping  chambers;  and  from  one  of  these,  a  wax  candle  in 
her  hand,  and  illuminating  her,  came  Mistress  Beatrix — 
the  light  falling  indeed  upon  the  scarlet  ribbon  which  she 
wore,  and  upon  the  most  brilliant  white  neck  in  the  world. 
Esmond  had  left  a  child  and  found  a  woman,  grown 
beyond  the  common  height;  and  arrived  at  such  a  daz- 
zling completeness  of  beauty,  that  his  eyes  might  well  show 
surprise  and  delight  at  beholding  her.  In  hers  there  was 
a  brightness  so  lustrous  and  melting,  that  I  have  seen  a 
whole  assembly  follow  her  as  if  by  an  attraction  irresisti- 
ble :  and  that  night  the  great  Duke  was  at  the  playhouse 
after  Ramillies,  every  soul  turned  and  looked  (she  chanced 
♦From  The  History  of  Henry  Esmond,  Esq.,  Bk.  ii.  Chap.  vii. 


DESCRIPTION  331 

to  enter  at  the  opposite  side  of  the  theatre  at  the  same 
moment)  at  her,  and  not  at  him.  She  was  a  brown  beauty : 
that  is,  her  eyes,  hair,  and  eyebrows,  and  eyelashes  were 
dark:  her  hair  curHng  with  rich  undulations,  and  waving 
5  over  her  shoulders;  but  her  complexion  was  as  dazzling 
white  as  snow  in  sunshine:  except  her  cheeks,  which  were 
a  bright  red,  and  her  lips,  which  were  of  a  still  deeper 
crimson.  Her  mouth  and  chin,  they  said,  were  too  large 
and  full,  and  so  they  might  be  for  a  goddess  in  marble, 

10  but  not  for  a  woman  whose  eyes  were  fire,  whose  look  was 
love,  whose  voice  was  the  sweetest  low  song,  whose  shape 
was  perfect  symmetry,  health,  decision,  activity,  whose 
foot  as  it  planted  itself  on  the  ground  was  firm  but  flexible, 
and  whose  motion,  whether  rapid  or  slow,  was  always 

15  perfect  grace — agile  as  a  nymph,  lofty  as  a  queen — now 

melting,  now  imperious,  now  sarcastic — there  was  no  single 

movement  of  hers  but  was  beautiful.     As  he  thinks  of  her, 

he  who  writes  feels  young  again,  and  remembers  a  paragon. 

So  she  came  holding  her  dress  with  one  fair  rounded  arm, 

20  and  her  taper  before  her,  tripping  down  the  stair  to  greet 
Esmond. 

WILLIAM  WORDSWORTH* 

Thomas  De  Quincey 

WORDSWORTH  was,  upon  the  whole,  not  a  well- 
made  man.  His  legs  were  pointedly  condemned 
by  all  female  connoisseurs  in  legs;  not  that  they  were  bad 
25  in  any  way  which  would  force  itself  upon  your  notice — 
there  was  no  absolute  deformity  about  them;  and  undoubt- 
edly they  had  been  serviceable  legs  beyond  the  average 
standard  of  human  requisition;  for  I  calculate,  upon  good 
data,  that  with  these  identical  legs  Wordsworth  must  have 
♦From  Reminiscences  of  the  English  Lake  Poets. 


332  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

traversed  a  distance  of  one  hundred  and  seventy-five 
thousand  to  one  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  English 
miles — a  mode  of  exertion  which,  to  him,  stood  in  the 
stead  of  alcohol  and  all  other  stimulants  whatsoever  to 
the  animal  spirits;  to  which,  indeed,  he  was  indebted  for  a  5 
life  of  unclouded  happiness,  and  we  for  much  of  what  is 
most  excellent  in  his  writings.  But  useful  as  they  have 
proved  themselves,  the  Wordsworthian  legs  were  cer- 
tainly not  ornamental;  and  it  was  really  a  pity,  as  I  agreed 
with  a  lady  in  thinking,  that  he  had  not  another  pair  10 
for  evening  dress  parties.  .  .  .  But  the  worst  part  of 
Wordsworth's  person  was  the  bust;  there  was  a  narrow- 
ness and  a  droop  about  the  shoulders  which  became 
striking,  and  had  an  effect  of  meanness  when  brought  into 
close  juxtaposition  with  a  figure  of  a  more  statuesque  15 
build.     Once  on  a  summer  evening,  walking  in  the  Vale 

of  Langdale  with  Wordsworth,  his  sister,  and  Mr.  J , 

a  native  Westmoreland  clergyman,  I  remember  that  Miss 
Wordsworth  was  positively  mortified  by  the  peculiar  illus- 
tration which  settled  upon  this  defective  conformation.   20 

Mr.  J ,  a  fine  towering  figure,  six  feet  high,  massy  and 

columnar  in  his  proportions,  happened  to  be  walking,  a 
little  in  advance,  with  Wordsworth;  Miss  Wordsworth  and 
myself  being  in  the  rear;  ...  at  intervals,  Miss  Words- 
worth would  exclaim,  in  a  tone  of  vexation,  "Is  it  possible,  25 
— can  that  be  William  ?  How  very  mean  he  looks!*'  And 
she  did  not  conceal  a  mortification  that  seemed  really 
painful,  until  I,  for  my  part,  could  not  forbear  laughing 
outright  at  the  serious  interest  which  she  carried  into  this 
trifle.  She  was,  however,  right,  as  regarded  the  mere  30 
visual  judgment.  Wordsworth's  figure,  with  all  its  de- 
fects, was  brought  into  more  powerful  relief  by  one  which 
had  been  cavSt  in  a  more  square  or  massy  mould;  .  .  .  and 
yet  Wordsworth  was  of  a  good  height  (five  feet  ten),  and 


I>ESCRIPTION  333 

not  a  slender  man  ....  But  the  total  effect  of  Words- 
worth's person  was  always  worst  in  a  state  of  motion. 
Meantime,  his  face — that  was  one  which  would  have  made 
amends  for  greater  defects  of  figure.  Many  such,  and 
5  finer,  I  have  seen  among  the  portraits  of  Titian,  and,  in  a 
later  period,  among  those  of  Vandyke,  .  .  .  but  none 
which  has  more  impressed  me  in  my  own  time. 

It  was  a  face  of  the  long  order,  often  falsely  classed  as 
oval  ....     The  head  was  well  filled  out;  and  there,  to 

10  begin  with,  was  a  great  advantage  over  the  head  of  Charles 
Lamb,  which  was  absolutely  truhcated  in  the  posterior 
region — sawn  off,  as  it  were,  by  no  timid  sawyer.  The  fore- 
head was  not  remarkably  lofty  ....  but  was  perhaps  re- 
markable  for   its   breadth   and   expansive   development. 

15  Neither  were  the  eyes  of  Wordsworth  "large,"  as  is 
erroneously  stated  somewhere  in  "Peter's  Letters;"  on  the 
contrary,  they  were  (I  think),  rather  small;  but  that  did 
not  interfere  with  their  effect,  which  at  times  was  fine,  and 
suitable  to  his  intellectual  character  ....     After  a  long 

20  day's  toil  in  walking,  I  have  seen  them  assume  an  appear- 
ance the  most  solemn  and  spiritual  that  it  is  possible  for 
the  human  eye  to  wear  ....  The  nose,  a  little  arched, 
was  large;  which,  by  the  way,  .  .  .  has  always  been 
accounted  an  unequivocal  expression  of  animal  appetites 

25  organically  strong.  And  that  expressed  the  simple  truth: 
Wordsworth's  intellectual  passions  were  fervent  and 
strong:  but  they  rested  upon  a  basis  of  preternatural 
animal  sensibility  diffused  through  all  the  animal  passions 
(or  appetites) ;  and  something  of  that  will  be  found  to  hold 

30  of  all  poets  who  have  been  great  by  original  force  and 
power  ....  The  mouth,  and  the  whole  circumjacencies 
of  the  mouth,  composed  the  strongest  feature  in  Words- 
worth's face;  there  was  nothing  specially  to  be  noticed  in 


834  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

the  mere  outline  of  the  lips;  but  the  swell  and  protrusion 
of  the  parts  above  and  around  the  mouth  were  both 
noticeable  in  themselves,  and  also  because  they  reminded 
me  of  a  very  interesting  fact  which  I  discovered  about 
three  years  after  my  first  visit  to  Wordsworth. 

The  Richardson  engraving  of  Milton  has  the  advan- 
tage of  presenting,  not  only  by  far  the  best  likeness  of 
Wordsworth,  but  of  Wordsworth  in  the  prime  of  his 
powers  ....  It  may  be  supposed  that  I  took  an  early 
opportunity  of  carrying  the  book  down  to  Grasmere,  and 
calling  for  the  opinions  of  W^ordsworth's  family  upon  this 
most  remarkable  coincidence.  Not  one  member  of  that 
family  but  was  as  much  impressed  as  myself  with  the  ac- 
curacy of  the  likeness.  All  the  peculiarities  even  were 
retained — a  drooping  appearance  of  the  eyelids,  that  re- 
markable swell  which  I  have  noticed  about  the  mouth,  the 
way  in  which  the  hair  lay  upon  the  forehead.  In  two 
points  only  there  was  a  deviation  from  the  rigorous  truth 
of  W^ordsworth's  features — the  face  was  a  little  too  short 
and  too  broad,  and  the  eyes  were  too  large.  There  was 
also  a  wreath  of  laurel  about  the  head,  which  (as  Words- 
worth remarked)  disturbed  the  natural  expression  of  the 
whole  picture;  else,  ...  he  also  admitted  that  the  re- 
semblance was,  for  that  'period  of  his  life,  perfect,  or  as 
nearly  so  as  art  could  accomplish. 

SAMUEL  TAYLOR  COLERIDGE* 

Thomas  Carlyle 

^  I  ^HE  good  man,  he  was  now  getting  old,  toward  sixty 
-■-      perhaps;  and  gave  you  an  idea  of  the  life  that  had 

been  full  of  sufferings;  a  life  heavy-laden,  half- vanquished, 
♦From  The  Life  of  John  Sterling.      Centenary  Edition,    vol.  xi,  p.  54. 


DESCRIPTION  335 

still  swimming  painfully  in  seas  of  manifold  physical  and 
other  bewilderment.  Brow  and  head  were  round,  and  of 
massive  weight,  but  the  face  was  flabby  and  irresolute. 
The  deep  eyes,  of  light  hazel,  were  as  full  of  sorrow  as  of 
inspiration;  confused  pain  looked  mildly  from  them,  as  in 
a  kind  of  mild  astonishment.  The  whole  figure  and  air, 
good  and  amiable  otherwise,  might  be  called  flabby  and 
irresolute,  expressive  of  weakness  under  possibility  of 
strength.  He  hung  loosely  on  his  limbs,  with  knees  bent, 
and  stooping  attitude;  in  walking,  he  rather  shuffled  than 
decisively  stepped;  and  a  lady  once  remarked,  he  never 
could  fix  which  side  of  the  garden  walk  would  suit  him 
best,  but  continually  shifted,  in  corkscrew  fashion,  and 
kept  trying  both.  A  heavy-laden,  high-aspiring,  and 
surely  much-suffering  man.  His  voice,  naturally  soft 
and  good,  had  contracted  itself  into  a  plaintive  shuffle  and 
singsong;  he  spoke  as  if  preaching — ^you  would  have  said, 
preaching  earnestly  and  also  hopelessly  the  weightiest 
things.  I  still  recollect  his  "object"  and  "subject," 
terms  of  continual  recurrence  in  the  Kantean  province; 
and  how  he  sang  and  snuffled  them  into  "om-m-mject" 
and  "  sum-m-mject, "  with  a  kind  of  solemn  shake  or 
quaver,  as  he  rolled  along.  No  talk,  in  his  century  or  in 
any  other,  could  be  more  surprising. 


ELIZABETH  BARRETT  BROWNING* 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne 

5  It /TRS.  BROWNING  met  us  at  the  door  of  the  drawing- 
-LtJl.  room,  and  greeted  us  most  kindly,-— a  pale,  small 
person,  scarcely  embodied  at  all;  at  any  rate,  only  sub- 

*From  French  and   Italian  Note  Books,  p.  294.     By   permission  of 
Houghton  Mifflin  Company. 


336  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

stantial  enough  to  put  forth  her  slender  fingers  to  be 
grasped,  and  to  speak  with  a  shrill,  yet  sweet,  tenuity  of 
voice.     Really,  I  do  not  see  how  Mr.  Browning  can  sup-  ' 
pose  that  he  has  an  earthly  wife  any  more  than  an  earthly 
child;  both  are  of  the  elfin  race,  and  will  flit  away  from  5 
him  some  day  when  he  least  thinks  of  it.     She  is  a  good 
and  kind  fairy,  however,  and  sweetly  disposed  toward  the 
human  race,   although  only  remotely  akin  to  it.     It  is 
wonderful  to  see  how  small  she  is,  how  pale  her  cheek,  how 
bright  and  dark  her  eyes.     There  is  not  such  another  10 
figure  in  the  world;  and  her  black  ringlets  cluster  down 
into  her  neck,  and  make  her  face  look  the  whiter  by  their 
sable  profusion.     I  could  not  form  any  judgment  about 
her  age;  it  may  range  anywhere  within  the  limits  of  human 
life  or  elfin  life.     When  I  met  her  in  London  at  Lord   15 
Houghton's  breakfast-table,  she  did  not  impress  me  so 
singularly;  for  the  naorning  light  is  more  prosaic  than  the 
dim  illumination  of  their  great  tapestried  drawing-room; 
and,  besides,  sitting  next  to  her,  she  did  not  have  occasion 
to  raise  her  voice  in  speaking,  and  I  was  not  sensible  what  20 
a  slender  voice  she  has.     It  is  marvelous  to  me  how  so 
extraordinary,  so  acute,  so  sensitive  a  creature  can  impress 
us,  as  she  does,  with  the  certainty  of  her  benevolence.     It 
seems  to  me  there  were  a  million  chances  to  one  that  she 
would  have  been  a  miracle  of  acidity  and  bitterness.  25 

CHARLES  LAMB* 

Thomas  Noon  Talfourd 

METHINKS  I  see  him  before  me  now,  as  he  appeared 
then,  and  as  he  continued  with  scarcely  any  per- 
ceptible  alteration   to  me,   during  the   twenty  years   of 

♦(Quoted  in  Charles  Lamb,  by  Alfred  Ainger,  pp.  74-5.  English  Men 
of  Letters  Series. 


DESCRIPTION  337 

intimacy  which  followed,  and  were  closed  by  his  death.  A 
light  frame,  so  fragile  that  it  seemed  as  if  a  breath  would 
overthrow  it,  clad  in  clerk-like  black,  was  surmounted  by  a 
head  of  form  and  expression  the  most  noble  and  sweet. 

5  His  black  hair  curled  crisply  about  an  expanded  forehead ; 
his  eyes,  softly  brown,  twinkled  with  varying  expression, 
though  the  prevalent  feeling  was  sad ;  and  the  nose  slightly 
curved,  and  delicately  carved  at  the  nostril,  with  the  lower 
outline  of  the  face  regularly  oval,  completed  a  head  which 

10  was  finely  placed  on  the  shoulders,  and  gave  importance 
and  even  dignity  to  a  diminutive  and  shadowy  stem.  Who 
shall  describe  his  countenance,  catch  its  quivering  sweet- 
ness, and  fix  it  for  ever  in  words  ?  There  are  none,  alas, 
to  answer  the  vain  desire  of  friendship.     Deep  thought, 

15  striving  with  humor;  the  lines  of  suffering  wreathed  into 
cordial  mirth;  and  a  smile  of  painful  sweetness,  present  an 
image  to  the  mind  which  it  can  as  little  describe  as  lose. 
His  personal  appearance  and  manner  are  not  unfitly 
characterized  by  what  he  himself  says  in  one  of  his  letters 

20  to  Manning,  of  Braham,  '*a  compound  of  the  Jew,  the 
gentleman,  and  the  angel." 


MY  LANDLADY'S  DAUGHTER* 

Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 

yiET.      19  +  .    Tender-eyed  blonde.     Long  ringlets. 

-^^    Cameo  pin.     Gold  pencil-case  on  a  chain.     Locket. 

Bracelet.    Album.    Autograph    book.   Accordeon.    Reads 

25  Byron,  Tupper,  and  Sylvanus  Cobb,  Junior,  while  her 

mother  makes  the  puddings.     Says   '*Yes.^'*  when  you 

tell  her  anything. 

♦From  The   Autocrat   of  the   Breakfast    Table.     By  permission  of 
Houghton  Mifflin  Company. 


338  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  W  RITING 

MR.  MICAWBER* 

Charles  Dickens 

THE  counting-house  clock  was  at  half-past  twelve,  and 
there  was  general  preparation  for  going  to  dinner, 
when  Mr.  Quinion  tapped  at  the  counting-house  window, 
and  beckoned  to  me  to  go  in.  I  went  in,  and  found  there  a 
stoutish,  middle-aged  person,  in  a  brown  surtout  and  black  5 
tights  and  shoes,  with  no  more  hair  upon  his  head  (which 
was  a  large  one,  and  very  shining)  than  there  is  upon  an 
eggy  and  with  a  very  extensive  face,  which  he  turned  full 
upon  me.  His  clothes  were  shabby,  but  he  had  an  impos- 
ing shirt-collar  on.  He  carried  a  jaunty  sort  of  stick,  with  10 
a  large  pair  of  rusty  tassels  to  it;  and  a  quizzing-glass  hung 
outside  his  coat, — ^for  ornament,  I  afterward  found,  as  he 
very  seldom  looked  through  it,  and  couldn't  see  anything 
when  he  did. 

"  This, "  said  Mr.  Quinion,  in  allusion  to  myself,  "  is  he.  **   15 

"This,"  said  the  stranger,  with  a  certain  condescending 
roll  in  his  voice,  and  a  certain  indescribable  air  of  doing 
something  genteel,  which  impressed  me  very  much,  "is 
Master  Copperfield.  I  hope  I  see  you  well,  sir  ?"  I  said 
I  was  very  well,  and  hoped  he  was.  I  was  suflficiently  ill  at  20 
ease,  Heaven  knows;  but  it  was  not  in  my  nature  to  com- 
plain much  at  that  time  of  my  life,  so  I  said  I  was  very  well, 
and  hoped  he  was. 

"I  am,"  said  the  stranger,  "thank  Heaven,  quite  well. 
I  have  received  a  letter  from  Mr.  Murdstone,  in  which  he  25 
mentions  that  he  would  desire  me  to  receive  into  an  apart- 
ment in  the  rear  of  my  house,  which  is  at  present  unoccu- 
pied— and  is,  in  short,  to  be  let  as  a — in  short,"  said  the 

*David  Copperfield,   Vol.    1,   Chap.   xi. 


DESCRIPTION  339 

stranger,  with  a  smile  and  in  a  burst  of  confidence,  "as  a 
bedroom — the  young  beginner  whom  I  have  now  the  plea- 
sure to" — and  the  stranger  waved  his  hand,  and  settled 
his  chin  in  his  shirt  collar. 
5       "This  is  Mr.  Micawber,"  said  Mr.  Quinion  to  me. 

"Ahem!"  said  the  stranger,  "that  is  my  name." 

"Mr.  Micawber,"  said  Mr.  Quinion,  "is  known  to  Mr. 

Murdstone.     He  takes  orders  for  us  on  commission,  when 

he  can  get  any.     He  has  been  written  to  by  Mr.  Murdstone, 

10  on  the  subject  of  your  lodgings,  and  he  will  receive  you  as  a 

lodger. " 

"My  address,"  said  Mr.  Micawber,  "is  Windsor  Ter- 
race, City  Road.     I^n  short,"  said  Mr.  Micawber,  with 
the  same  genteel  air,  and  in  another  burst  of  confidence — 
15   "I  live  there." 

I  made  him  a  bow. 

"Under  the  impression, "  said  Mr.  Micawber,  "that  your 
peregrinations  in  this  metroplis  have  not  as  yet  been  ex- 
tensive, and  that  you  might  have  some  difficulty  in  pene- 
20  trating  the  arcana  of  the  Modern  Babylon  in  the  direction 
of  the  City  Road — in  short,"  said  Mr.  Micawber,  in  an- 
other burst  of  confidence,  "that  you  might  lose  yourself — 
I  shall  be  happy  to  call  this  evening,  and  install  you  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  nearest  way." 
25  I  thanked  him  with  all  my  heart;  for  it  was  friendly  in 
him  to  offer  to  take  that  trouble. 

"At  what  hour,"  said  Mr.  Micawber,  "shall  I—" 

"At  about  eight,"  said  Mr.  Quinion. 

"At  about  eight,"  said   Mr.   Micawber.      "I  beg  to 
30  wish   you   good   day,  Mr.  Quinion.      I  will  intrude  no 
longer. " 

So  he  put  on  his  hat,  and  went  out  with  his  cane  under 
his  arm:  very  upright,  and  humming  a  tune  when  he  was 
clear  of  the  counting-house. 


340  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

THE  LADIES  OF  LLANGOLLEN* 

John  Gibson  Lockhart 

WE  slept  on  Wednesday  evening  at  Capel  Carig,  which 
Sir  W.  supposes  to  mean  the  Chapel  of  the  Crags, 
a  pretty  little  inn  in  a  most  picturesque  situation  certainly, 
and  as  to  the  matter  of  toasted  cheese  quite  exquisite. 
Next  day  we  advanced  through,  I  verily  believe,  the  most  5 
perfect  gem  of  a  country  eye  ever  saw,  having  all  the  wild- 
ness  of  Highland  backgrounds,  and  all  the  loveliness  of 
rich  English  landscape  nearer  us,  and  streams  like  the 
purest  and  most  babbling  of  our  own.     At  Llangollen 
your  papa  was  waylaid  by  the  celebrated  "Ladies,"  viz:   10 
Lady  Eleanor  Buller  and  the  Honorable  Miss  Ponsonby, 
who  having  been  one  or  both  crossed  in  love,  forswore  all 
dreams  of  matrimony  in  the  heyday  of  youth,  beauty,  and 
fashion,  and  selected  this  charming  spot  for  the  repose  of 
their  now  time-honored  virginity.     It  was  many  a  day,   1« 
however,  before  they  could  get  implicit  credit  for  being  the 
innocent  friends  they  really  were  among  the  people  of  the 
neighborhood,  for  their  elopement  from  Ireland  had  been 
performed  under  suspicious  circumstances,  and  as  Lady 
Eleanor  arrived  here  in  her  natural  aspect  of  a  pretty  girl,   20 
while  Miss  Ponsonby  had  condescended  to  accompany 
her  in  the  garb  of  a  smart  footman  in  buckskin  breeches, 
years  and  years  elapsed  ere  full  justice  was  done  to  the 
character  of  their  romance.     We  proceeded  up  the  hill, 
and  found  everything  about  them  and  their  habitation  odd   25 
and   extravagant   beyond   report.     Imagine  two  women, 
one  apparently  seventy,  the  other  sixty-five,  dressed   in 
heavy   blue   riding-habits,    enormous   shoes,   and    men 's 
♦From  Letters  of  John  Gibson  Lockhart.  1825. 


DESCRIPTION  341 

hats,  with  their  petticoats  so  tucked  up  that  at  the  first 
glance  of  them,  fussing  and  tottering  about  their  porch  in 
the  agony  of  expectation,  we  took  them  for  a  couple  of 
hazy  or  crazy  old  sailors.  On  nearer  inspection,  they 
5  both  wear  a  world  of  brooches,  rings,  etc.,  and  Lady 
Eleanor  positively  orders — several  stars  and  crosses,  and 
a  red  ribbon,  exactly  like  a  K.  C.  B.  To  crown  all,  they 
have  crop  heads,  shaggy,  rough,  bushy,  and  as  white  as 
snow,  the  one  with  age  alone,  the  other  assisted  by  a 

10  sprinkling  of  powder.  The  elder  lady  is  almost  blind,  and 
every  way  much  decayed;  the  other,  the  ci-devant  groom, 
in  good  preservation.  But  who  could  paint  the  prints, 
the  dogs,  the  cats,  the  miniatures,  the  cram  of  cabinets, 
clocks,  glass-cases,  books,  bijouterie,  dragon-china,  nod- 

15  ding  mandarins,  and  whirligigs  of  every  shape  and  hue — 
the  whole  house  outside  and  in  (for  we  must  see  everything 
in  the  dressing  closets),  covered  with  carved  oak,  very  rich 
and  fine  some  of  it — and  the  illustrated  copies  of  Sir  W.'s 
poems,    and    the   joking,    simpering    compliments    about 

20  Waverley^  and  the  anxiety  to  know  who  Maclvor  really 
was,  and  the  absolute  devouring  of  the  poor  Unknown, 
who  had  to  carry  off,  besides  all  the  rest,  one  small  bit  of 
literal  butter  dug  up  in  a  Milesian  stone  jar  lately  from 
the  bottom  of  some  Irish  bog.     Great  romances,  i.  e., 

25  absurd  innocence  of  character,  one  must  have  looked  for; 
but  it  was  confounding  to  find  this  mixed  up  with  such 
eager  curiosity,  and  enormous  knowledge  of  the  tattle  and 
scandal  of  the  world  they  had  so  long  left.  Their  tables 
were  piled   with  newspapers  from   every   corner  of  the 

30  kingdom,  and  they  seemed  to  have  the  deaths  and  mar- 
riages of  the  antipodes  at  their  fingers'  ends.  Their  al- 
bums and  autographs,  from  Louis  XVIII  and  George  IV, 
down  to  magazine  poets  and  quack-doctors,  are  a  museum. 
I  shall  never  see  the  spirit  of  blue-stockingism  again  in 


342  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

such  perfect  incarnation.  Peveril  won't  get  over  their 
final  kissing  match  for  a  week.  Yet  it  is  too  bad  to  laugh 
at  these  good  old  girls;  they  have  long  been  the  guardian 
angels  of  the  village,  and  are  worshipped  by  man,  woman, 
and  child  about  them. 

Suggestions:  These  descriptions  of  people  exemplify  several 
different  methods  of  observation.  What,  for  instance,  is  the 
difference  in  method  between  "The  Antiquary"  and  "Mr. 
Micawber,"  or  between  Carlyle's  description  of  Coleridge, 
and  De  Quincey's  description  of  Wordsworth? 

Consider  the  point  of  view  of  each  description.  In  which 
one  do  you  think  that  the  point  of  view  is  most  consistently 
and  convincingly    maintained? 

What  distinctive  peculiarities  of  method  do  we  find  in  "Mr. 
Micawber  ?  " — in  "  Esther  Lyon  ?  " — in  "  My  Landlady's  Daugh- 
ter?" 

Decide  on  the  method  which  you  intend  to  use  for  your  adapted 
subjects,  and  stick  to  it  rigidly.  Do  not  catalogue  details,  but 
pick  out  two  or  three  significant  features  or  characteristics  for 
emphasis.  Try  the  "dramatic"  method  on  at  least  one  of 
your  subjects.  In  this  general  connection,  Professor  Barrett 
Wendell's  English  Composition,  pp.  217-19,  will  be  found  helpful. 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS* 

A  friend,  for  purposes  of  identification. 
A  friend,  to  show  character. 
A  distinguished-looking  personage. 
A  well-known  personage. 
The  teacher  whom  I  remember  best. 
The  prettiest  girl  I  know. 
The  cleverest  person  I  know. 
The  most  conceited  person  I  know. 
A  disagreeable  character. 
An  odd  character. 
An  old  gentleman. 
An  old  lady. 

A  typical  Freshman  (Sophomore,  etc.). 
♦These  of  course  may  be  indefinitely  extended  and  made  local. 


DESCRIPTION 


343 


An  engineering  student. 

An  agricultural  student. 

The  church  choir. 

A  shop  girl. 

A  janitor. 

A  newsboy. 

A  fireman. 

An  Indian  squaw. 


A  commercial  traveler. 

The  hired  girl. 

A  book  agent. 

A  reporter. 

A  "cow-puncher.'* 

A  washerwoman. 

A  street-car  conductor. 

A  Brave. 


NARRATION 


AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF  CHARLES  DARWIN* 

A  GERMAN  editor  having  written  to  me  for  an  account 
of  the  development  of  my  mind  and  character,  with 
some  sketch  of  my  autobiography,  I  have  thought  that  the 
attempt  would  amuse  me,  and  might  possibly  interest  my 

5  children  or  their  children.  I  know  that  it  would  have 
interested  me  greatly  to  have  read  even  so  short  and  dull  a 
sketch  of  the  mind  of  my  grandfather,  written,  by  himself, 
and  what  he  thought  and  did,  and  how  he  worked.  I  have 
attempted  to  write  the  following  account  of  myself,  as  if  I 

10  were  a  dead  man  in  another  world  looking  back  at  my  own 

life.     Nor  have  I  found  this  difficult,  for  life  is  nearly  over 

with  me.     I  have  taken  no  pains  about  my  style  of  writing. 

I  was  born  at  Shrewsbury  on  February  12,  1809,  and  my 

earliest  recollection  goes  back  only  to  when  I  was  a  few 

15  months  over  four  years  old,  when  we  went  to  near  Aber- 
gele for  sea-bathing,  and  I  recollect  some  events  and  places 
there  with  some  little  distinctness. 

My  mother  died  in  July,  1817,  when  I  was  a  little  over 
eight  years  old,  and  it  is  odd  that  I  can  remember  hardly 

20  anything  about  her  except  her  death-bed,  her  black  velvet 
gown,  and  her  curiously  constructed  work-table.  In  the 
spring  of  this  same  year  I  was  sent  to  a  day-school  in 
Shrewsbury,  where  I  stayed  a  year.  I  have  been  told  that 
I  was  much  slower  in  learning  than  my  younger  sister 

25  Catherine,  and  I  believe  that  I  was  in  many  ways  a  naughty 
boy. 

By  the  time  I  went  to  this  day-school  my  taste  for 

♦Selected  from  Chapter  ii.  of  Life  and  Letters  of  Charles  Darwin, 
by  his  son  Francis  Darwin,  1888.  Reprinted  by  permission  of  D. 
Appleton    &  Company. 

347 


348  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

natural  history,  and  more  especially  for  collecting,  was  well 
developed.  I  tried  to  make  out  the  names  of  plants,  and 
collected  all  sorts  of  things,  shells,  seals,  franks,  coins,  and 
minerals.  The  passion  for  collecting  which  leads  a  man 
to  be  a  systematic  naturalist,  a  virtuoso,  or  a  miser,  was  5 
very  strong  in  me,  and  was  clearly  innate,  as  none  of  my 
sisters  or  brother  ever  had  this  taste. 

One  little  event  during  this  year  has  fixed  itself  very 
firmly  in  my  mind,  and  I  hope  that  it  has  done  so  from  my 
conscience  having  been  afterward  sorely  troubled  by  it;  it  10 
is  curious  as  showing  that  apparently  I  was  interested  at 
this  early  age  in  the  variability  of  plants!  I  told  another 
little  boy  (I  believe  it  was  Leighton,  who  afterward  be- 
came a  well-known  lichenologist  and  botanist),  that  I 
could  produce  variously  colored  polyanthuses  and  prim-  15 
roses  by  watering  them  with  certain  colored  fluids,  which 
was  of  course  a  monstrous  fable,  and  had  never  been  tried 
by  me.  I  may  here  confess  that  as  a  little  boy  I  was  much 
given  to  inventing  deliberate  falsehoods,  and  this  was 
always  done  for  the  sake  of  causing  excitement.  For  20 
instance,  I  once  gathered  much  valuable  fruit  from  my 
father's  trees  and  hid  it  in  the  shrubbery,  and  then  ran  in 
breathless  haste  to  spread  the  news  that  I  had  discovered 
a  hoard  of  stolen  fruit. 

I  must  have  been  a  very  simple  little  fellow  when  I  first  25 
went  to  the  school.  A  boy  of  the  name  of  Garnett  took 
me  into  a  cake  shop  one  day,  and  bought  some  cakes  for 
which  he  did  not  pay,  as  the  shopman  trusted  him.  When 
we  came  out  I  asked  him  why  he  did  not  pay  for  them,  and 
he  instantly  answered,  "Why,  do  you  not  know  that  my  30 
uncle  left  a  great  sum  of  money  to  the  town  on  condition 
that  every  tradesman  should  give  whatever  was  wanted 
without  payment  to  any  one  who  wore  his  old  hat  and  moved 
(it)  in  a  particular  manner?"  and  he  then  showed  me 


NARRATION  349 

how  it  was  moved.  He  then  went  into  another  shop  where 
he  was  trusted,  and  asked  for  some  small  article,  moving 
his  hat  in  the  proper  manner,  and  of  course  obtained  it 
without  payment.     When  we  came  out  he  said,  "Now  if 

5  you  like  to  go  by  yourself  into  that  cake-shop  (how  well  I 
remember  its  exact  position)  I  will  lend  you  my  hat,  and 
you  can  get  whatever  you  like  if  you  move  the  hat  on  your 
head  properly. "  I  gladly  accepted  the  generous  offer,  and 
went  in  and  asked  for  some  cakes,  moved  the  old  hat  and 

10  was  walking  out  of  the  shop,  when  the  shopman  made  a 
rush  at  me,  so  I  dropped  the  cakes  and  ran  for  dear  life, 
and  was  astonished  by  being  greeted  with  shouts  of  laughter 
by  my  false  friend  Garnett. 

I  can  say  in  my  own  favor  that  I  was  as  a  boy  humane, 

15  but  I  owed  this  entirely  to  the  instruction  and  example  of 
my  sisters.  I  doubt  indeed  whether  humanity  is  a  natural 
or  innate  quality.  I  was  very  fond  of  collecting  eggs,  but 
I  never  took  more  than  a  single  egg  out  of  a  bird's  nest, 
except  on  one  single  occasion,  when  I  took  all,  not  for  their 

20  value,  but  from  a  sort  of  bravado. 

I  had  a  strong  taste  for  angling,  and  would  sit  for  any 
number  of  hours  on  the  bank  of  a  river  or  pond  watching 
the  float;  when  at  Maer*  I  was  told  that  I  could  kill  the 
worms  with  salt  and  water,  and  from  that  day  I  never 

25  spitted  a  living  worm,  though  at  the  expense  probably  of 
some  loss  of  success. 

Once  as  a  very  little  boy  whilst  at  the  day  school,  or  before 
that  time,  I  acted  cruelly,  for  I  beat  a  puppy,  I  believe, 
simply  from  enjoying  the  sense  of  power;  but  the  beating 

30  could  not  have  been  severe,  for  the  puppy  did  not  howl, 

of  which  I  feel  sure,  as  the  spot  was  near  the  house.     This 

act  lay  heavily  on  my  conscience,  as  is  shown  by  my 

remembering  the  exact  spot  where  the  crime  was  commit- 

*The  house  of  his  uncle,  Josiah  Wedgwood. 


350  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

ted.  It  probably  lay  all  the  heavier  from  my  love  of  dogs 
being  then,  and  for  a  long  time  afterward,  a  passion. 
Dogs  seemed  to  know  this,  for  I  was  an  adept  in  robbing 
their  love  from  their  masters. 

I  remember  clearly  only  one  other  incident  during  this  5 
year  while  at  Mr.  Case's  daily  school, — namely,  the  burial    ' 
of  a  dragoon  soldier;  and  it  is  surprising  how  clearly  I  can 
still  see  the  horse  with  the  man's  empty  boots  and  carbine 
suspended  to  the  saddle,  and  the  firing  over  the  grave. 
This  scene  deeply  stirred  whatever  poetic  fancy  was  in   10 
me. 

In  the  summer  of  1818  I  went  to  Dr.  Butler's  great 
school  in  Shrewsbury,  and  remained  there  for  seven  years, 
till  midsummer,  1825,  when  I  was  sixteen  years  old.     I 
boarded  at  this  school,  so  that  I  had  the  great  advantage   15 
of  living  the  life  of  a  true  schoolboy;  but  as  the  distance 
was  hardly  more  than  a  mile  to  my  home,  I  very  often  ran 
there  in  the  longer  intervals  between  the  callings  over  and 
before  locking  up  at  night.     This,  I  think,  was  in  many 
ways  advantageous  to  me  by  keeping  up  home  affections   20 
and  interests.     I  remember  in  the  early  part  of  my  school 
life  that  I  often  had  to  run  very  quickly  to  be  in  time,  and 
from  being  a  fleet  runner  was  generally  successful;  but 
when  in  doubt  I  prayed  earnestly  to  God  to  help  me,  and 
I  well   remember  that  I   attributed   my   success  to  the  25 
prayers  and  not  to  my  quick  running,  and  marveled  how 
generally  I  was  aided. 

I  have  heard  my  father  and  elder  sister  say  that  I  had,  as 
a  very  young  boy,  a  strong  taste  for  long  solitary  walks; 
but  what  I  thought  about  I  know  not.  I  often  became  30 
quite  absorbed,  and  once,  while  returning  to  school  on  the 
summit  of  the  old  fortifications  round  Shrewsbury,  which 
had  been  converted  into  a  public  foot-path  with  no  parapet 
on  one  side,  I  walked  off  and  fell  to  the  ground,  but  the 


NARRATION  351 

height  was  only  seven  or  eight  feet.  Nevertheless  the 
number  of  thoughts  which  passed  through  my  mind  during 
this  very  short,  but  sudden  and  wholly  unexpected  fall, 
was  astonishing,  and  seems  hardly  compatible  with  what 

5  physiologists  have,  I  believe,  proved  about  each  thought's 
requiring  quite  an  appreciable  amount  of  time. 

Nothing  could  have  been  worse  for  the  development  of 
my  mind  than  Dr.  Butler's  school,  as  it  was  strictly  classical, 
nothing  else  being  taught,  except  a  little  ancient  geography 

10  and  history.  The  school  as  a  means  of  education  to  me 
was  simply  a  blank.  During  my  whole  life  I  have  been 
singularly  incapable  of  mastering  any  language.  Especial 
attention  was  paid  to  verse-making,  and  this  I  could  never 
do  well.     I  had  many  friends,  and  got  together  a  good 

15  collection  of  old  verses,  which  by  patching  together,  some- 
times aided  by  other  boys,  I  could  work  into  any  subjec^t. 
IVIuch  attention  was  paid  to  learning  by  heart  the  lessons 
of  the  previous  day;  this  I  could  effect  with  great  facility, 
learning  forty  or  fifty  lines  of  Virgil  or  Homer,  while  I 

20  was  in  morning  chapel;  but  the  exercise  was  utterly  use- 
less, for  every  verse  was  forgotten  in  forty-eight  hours. 
I  was  not  idle,  and  with  the  exception  of  versification, 
generally  worked  conscientiously  at  my  classics,  not  using 
cribs.     The    sole    pleasure    I    ever    received    from    such 

25  studies,  was  from  some  of  the  odes  of  Horace,  which  I 
admired  greatly. 

When  I  left  the  school  I  was  for  my  age  neither  high 
nor  low  in  it;  and  I  believe  that  I  was  considered  by  all  my 
masters  and  by  my  father  as  a  very  ordinary  boy,  rather 

30  below  the  common  standard  in  intellect.  To  my  deep 
mortification  my  father  once  said  to  me,  "You  care  for 
nothing  but  shooting,  dogs,  and  rat-catching,  and  you  will 
be  a  disgrace  to  yourself  and  all  your  family."  But  my 
father,  who  was  the  kindest  man  I  ever  knew  and  whose 


352  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

memory  I  love  with  all  my  heart,  must  have  been  angry 
and  somewhat  unjust  when  he  used  such  words. 

Looking  back  as  well  as  I  can  at  my  character  during 
my  school  life,  the  only  qualities  which  at  this  period 
promised  well  for  the  future,  were,  that  I  had  strong  and  5 
diversified  tastes,  much  zeal  for  whatever  interested  me, 
and  a  keen  pleasure  in  understanding  any  complex  subject 
or  thing.  I  was  taught  Euclid  by  a  private  tutor,  and  I 
distinctly  remember  the  intense  satisfaction  which  the 
clear  geometrical  proofs  gave  me.  I  remember,  with  10 
equal  distinctness,  the  delight  which  my  uncle  gave  me 
(the  father  of  Francis  Galton)  by  explaining  the  principle 
of  the  vernier  of  a  barometer.  With  respect  to  diversified 
tastes,  independently  of  science,  I  was  fond  of  reading 
various  books,  and  I  used  to  sit  for  hours  reading  the  15 
historical  plays  of  Shakespeare,  generally  in  an  old  window 
in  the  thick  walls  of  the  school.  I  read  also  other  poetry, 
such  as  Thomson's  Seasons,  and  the  recently  published 
poems  of  Byron  and  Scott.  I  mention  this  because  later 
in  life  I  wholly  lost,  to  my  great  regret,  all  pleasure  from  20 
poetry  of  any  kind,  including  Shakespeare.  In  connec- 
tion with  pleasure  from  poetry,  I  may  add  that  in  1822  a 
vivid  delight  in  scenery  was  first  awakened  in  my  mind, 
during  a  riding  tour  of  the  borders  of  Wales,  and  this  has 
lasted  longer  than  any  other  esthetic  pleasure.  25 

As  I  was  doing  no  good  at  school,  ray  father  wisely  took 
me  away  at  a  rather  earlier  age  than  usual,  and  sent  me 
(October,  1825)  to  Edinburgh  University  with  my  brother, 
where  I  stayed  for  two  years  or  sessions.  My  brother  was 
completing  his  medical  studies,  though  I  do  not  believe  30 
he  ever  really  intended  to  practise,  and  I  was  sent  there  to 
commence  them.  But  soon  after  this  period  I  became 
convinced   from    various    small    circumstances   that    my 


NARRATION  353 

father  would  leave  me  property  enough  to  subsist  on  with 
some  comfort,  though  I  never  imagined  that  I  should  be  so 
rich  a  man  as  I  am;  but  my  belief  was  sufficient  to  check 
any  strenuous  efforts  to  learn  medicine. 
5  The  instruction  was  altogether  by  lectures,  and  these 
were  intolerably  dull,  with  the  exception  of  those  on 
chemistry  by  Hope;  but  to  my  mind  there  are  no  advan- 
tages and  many  disadvantages  in  lectures  compared  with 
reading.     Dr.   Duncan's  lectures  on  Materia  Medica  at 

10  eight  o'clock  on  a  winter's  morning  are  something  fearful 

to   remember.     Dr. made   his   lectures   on   human 

anatomy  as  dull  as  he  was  himself,  and  the  subject  dis- 
gusted me.  It  has  proved  one  of  the  greatest  evils  in  my 
life  that  I  was  not  urged  to  practise  dissection,  for  I  should 

15  soon  have  got  over  my  disgust;  and  the  practice  would 
have  been  invaluable  for  my  future  work.  This  has  been 
an  irremediable  evil,  as  well  as  my  incapacity  to  draw. 
I  also  attended  regularly  the  clinical  wards  in  the  hospital. 
Some  of  the  cases  distressed  me  a  good  deal,  and  I  still 

20  have  vivid  pictures  before  me  of  some  of  them;  but  I  was 
not  so  foolish  as  to  allow  this  to  lessen  my  attendance. 
I  cannot  understand  why  this  part  of  my  medical  course 
did  not  interest  me  in  a  greater  degree;  for  during  the 
summer  before  coming  to  Edinburgh  I  began  attending 

25  some  of  the  poor  people,  chiefly  children  and  women  in 
Shrewsbury:  I  wrote  down  as  full  an  account  as  I  could 
of  the  case  with  all  the  symptoms,  and  read  them  aloud  to 
my  father,  who  suggested  further  inquiries  and  advised  me 
what  medicines  to  give,  which  I  made  up  myself.     At  one 

30  time  I  had  at  least  a  dozen  patients,  and  felt  a  keen  interest 
in  the  work.  My  father,  who  was  by  far  the  best  judge  of 
character  whom  I  ever  knew,  declared  that  I  should  make 
a  successful  physician, — meaning  by  this  one  who  would 
get  many  patients.     He  maintained  that  the  chief  element 


354  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

of  success  was  exciting  confidence;  but  what  he  saw  in  me 
which  convinced  him  that  I  should  create  confidence  I 
know  not.  I  also  attended  on  two  occasions  the  operating 
theatre  in  the  hospital  at  Edinburgh,  and  saw  two  very 
bad  operations,  one  on  a  child,  but  I  rushed  away  before  5 
they  were  completed.  Nor  did  I  ever  attend  again,  for 
hardly  any  inducement  would  have  been  strong  enough  to 
make  me  do  so;  this  being  long  before  the  blessed  days 
of  chloroform.  The  two  cases  fairly  haunted  me  for  many 
a  long  year.  10 

As  it  was  decided  that  I  should  be  a  clergyman,  it  was 
necessary  that  I  should  go  to  one  of  the  English  universitiea 
and  take  a  degree;  but  as  I  had  never  opened  a  classical 
book  since  leaving  school,  I  found  to  my  dismay,  that  in 
the  two  intervening  years  I  had  actually  forgotten,  in-  15 
credible  as  it  may  appear,  almost  everything  which  I  had 
learned,  even  to  some  few  of  the  Greek  letters.  I  did  not 
therefore  proceed  to  Cambridge  at  the  usual  time  in 
October,  but  worked  with  a  private  tutor  in  Shrewsbury, 
and  went  to  Cambridge  after  the  Christmas  vacation,  early  20 
in  1828.  I  soon  recovered  my  school  standard  of  knowl- 
edge, and  could  translate  easy  Greek  books,  such  as 
Homer  and  the  Greek  Testament,  with  moderate  facility. 

During  the  three  years  which  I  spent  at  Cambridge  my 
time  was  wasted,  as  far  as  the  academical  studies  were  25 
concerned,  as  completely  as  at  Edinburgh  and  at  school. 
I  attempted  mathematics,  and  even  went  during  the 
summer  of  1828  with  a  private  tutor  (a  very  dull  man)  to 
Barmouth,  but  I  got  on  very  slowly.  The  work  was 
repugnant  to  me,  chiefly  from  my  not  being  able  to  see  any  30 
meaning  in  the  early  steps  in  algebra.  This  impatience 
was  very  foolish,  and  in  after  years  I  have  deeply  rej^ retted 
that  I  did  not  proceed  far  enough  at  least  to  understand 


NARRATION  355 

something  of  the  great  leading  principles  of  mathematics, 
for  men  thus  endowed  seem  to  have  an  extra  sense.  But 
I  do  not  believe  that  I  should  have  succeeded  beyond  a 
very  low  grade.  With  respect  to  classics  I  did  nothing 
5  except  attend  a  few  compulsory  college  lectures,  and  the 
attendance  was  almost  nominal.  In  my  second  year  I 
had  to  work  for  a  month  or  two  to  pass  the  Little-Go, 
which  I  did  easily.  Again,  in  my  last  year  I  worked  with 
some  earnestness  for  my  final  degree  of  B.  A.,  and  brushed 

10  up  my  classics,  together  with  a  little  algebra  and  Euclid, 
which  latter  gave  me  much  pleasure,  as  it  did  at  school. 
In  order  to  pass  the  B.  A.  examination,  it  was  also  ne- 
cessary to  get  up  Paley's  Evidences  of  Christianity,  and 
his  Moral  Philosophy.     This  was   done   in   a  thorough 

15  manner,  and  I  am  convinced  that  I  could  have  written 
out  the  whole  of  the  Evidences  with  perfect  correctness, 
but  not  of  course  in  the  clear  language  of  Paley.  The  logic 
of  this  book  and,  as  I  may  add,  of  his  Natural  Theology, 
gave  me  as  much  delight  as  did  Euclid.     The  careful 

?0  study  of  these  works,  without  attempting  to  learn  any  part 
by  rote,  was  the  only  part  of  the  academical  course  which, 
as  I  then  felt  and  as  I  still  believe,  was  of  the  least  use  to  me 
in  the  education  of  my  mind.  I  did  not  at  that  time  trouble 
myself  about  Paley's  premises;  and  taking  these  on  trust, 

25  I  was  charmed  and  convinced  by  the  long  line  of  argumen- 
tation. By  answering  well  the  examination  questions  in 
Paley,  by  doing  Euclid  well,  and  by  not  failing  miserably 
in  classics,  I  gained  a  good  place  among  the  or  noUo}  or 
crowd  of  men  who  do  not  go  in  for  honors.     Oddly  enough 

30  I  cannot  remember  how  high  I  stood,  and  my  memory 
fluctuates  between  the  fifth,  tenth,  or  twelfth,  name  on  the 
list. 

Public  lectures  on  several  branches  were  given  in  the 
university,  attendance  being  quite  voluntary;  but  I  was  so 


356  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

sickened  with  lectures  at  Edinburgh  that  I  did  not  even 
attend  Sedgwick's  eloquent  and  interesting  lectures. 
Had  I  done  so  I  should  probably  have  become  a  geologist 
earlier  than  I  did.  I  attended,  however,  Henslow's 
lectures  on  botany,  and  liked  them  much  for  their  extreme  5 
clearness,  and  the  admirable  illustrations;  but  I  did  not 
study  botany.  Henslow  used  to  take  his  pupils,  including 
several  of  the  older  members  of  the  university,  field  ex- 
cursions, on  foot  or  in  coaches,  to  distant  places,  or  in  a 
barge  down  the  river,  and  lectured  on  the  rarer  plants  and  10 
animals  which  were  observed.  These  excursions  were 
delightful. 

Although,  as  we  shall  presently  see,  there  were  some  re- 
deeming features  in  my  life  at  Cambridge,  my  time  was 
sadly  wasted  there,  and  worse  than  wasted.     From  my   15 
passion  for  shooting  and  for  hunting,  and,  when  this  failed, 
for  riding  across  country,  I  got  into  a  sporting  set,  includ- 
ing some  dissipated,  low-minded  young  men.     We  used 
often  to  dine  together  in  the  evening,  though  these  dinners 
often  included  men  of  a  higher  stamp,  and  we  sometimes  20 
drank  too  much,  with  jolly  singing  and  playing  at  cards 
afterward.     I  know  that  I  ought  to  feel  ashamed  of  days 
and  evenings  thus  spent,  but  as  some  of  my  friends  were 
very  pleasant,  and  we  were  all  in  the  highest  spirits,  I 
cannot  help  looking  back  to  these  times  with  much  pleas-  25 
ure. 

But  I  am  glad  to  think  that  I  had  many  other  friends  of 
a  widely  different  nature.  I  was  very  intimate  with 
Whitley,*  who  was  afterward  Senior  Wrangler,  and  we 
used  continually  to  take  long  walks  together.  He  inocu-  30 
lated  me  with  a  taste  for  pictures  and  good  engravings, 
of  which  I  bought  some.     I  frequently  went  to  the  Fitz- 

*Rev.  C.  Whitley,  Hon.  Canon  of  Durham,   formerly  Reader  in 
Natural   Philosophy   in    Durliam    University. 


NARRATION  S57 

William  Gallery,  and  my  taste  must  have  been  fairly  good, 
for  I  certainly  admired  the  best  pictures,  which  I  discussed 
with  the  old  curator.  I  read  also  with  much  interest  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds'  book.  This  taste,  though  not  natural 
5  to  me,  lasted  for  several  years,  and  many  of  the  pictures 
in  the  National  Gallery  in  London  gave  me  much  pleasure; 
that  of  Sebastian  del  Piombo  exciting  in  me  a  sense  of 
sublimity. 

I  also  got  into  a  musical  set,  I  believe  by  means  of  my 

10  warm-hearted  friend,  Herbert,*  who  took  a  high  wrangler's 
degree.  From  associating  with  these  men,  and  hearing 
them  play,  I  acquired  a  strong  taste  for  music,  and  used 
very  often  to  time  my  walks  so  as  to  hear  on  week  days  the 
anthem  in  King's  College  Chapel.     This  gave  me  intense 

15  pleasure,  so  that  my  backbone  would  sometimes  shiver. 
I  am  sure  that  there  was  no  affectation  or  mere  imitation 
in  this  taste,  for  I  used  generally  to  go  by  myself  to  King's 
College,  and  I  sometimes  hired  the  chorister  boys  to  sing 
in  my  rooms.     Nevertheless  I  am  so  utterly  destitute  of 

20  ear,  that  I  cannot  perceive  a  discord,  or  keep  time  and 
hum  a  tune  correctly;  and  it  is  a  mystery  how  I  could 
possibly  have  derived  pleasure  from  musicf 

I  have  now  mentioned  all  the  books  which  I  have  pub- 
lished, and  these  have  been  the  milestones  in  my  life,  so 

25  that  little  remains  to  be  said.  I  am  not  conscious  of  any 
change  in  my  mind  during  the  last  thirty  years,  excepting 
in  one  point  presently  to  be  mentioned;  nor,  indeed,  could 
any  change  have  been  expected  unless  one  of  general 
deterioration.     But  my  father  lived   to  his   eighty- third 

30  year  with  his  mind  as  lively  as  ever  it  was,  and  all  his 

*The  late  John  Maurice  Herbert,  County  Court  Judge  of  Cardiff 
and   the  Monmouth  Circuit. 

fThe  middle  period  of  Darwin's  life  has  been  omitted,  for  lack  of 
space.    [Editor.] 


358  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

faculties  undimmed ;  and  I  hope  that  I  may  die  before  my 
mind  fails  to  a  sensible  extent.  I  think  that  I  have  be- 
come a  little  more  skillful  in  guessing  right  explanations 
and  in  devising  experimental  tests;  but  this  may  probably 
be  the  result  of  mere  practice,  and  of  a  larger  store  of  5 
knowledge.  I  have  as  much  difficulty  as  ever  in  express- 
ing myself  clearly  and  concisely;  and  this  difficulty  has 
caused  me  a  great  loss  of  time;  but  it  has  had  the  compen- 
sating advantage  of  forcing  me  to  think  long  and  intently 
about  every  sentence,  and  thus  I  have  been  led  to  see  10 
errors  in  reasoning  and  in  my  own  observations  or  those  of 
others. 

There  seems  to  be  a  sort  of  fatality  in  my  mind  leading 
me  to  put  at  first  my  statement  or  proposition  in  a  wrong  or 
awkward  form.  Formerly  I  used  to  think  about  my  15 
sentences  before  writing  them  down;  but  for  several  years 
I  have  found  that  it  saves  time  to  scribble  in  a  vile  hand 
whole  pages  as  quickly  as  I  possibly  can,  contracting  half 
the  words;  and  then  correct  deliberately.  Sentences  thus 
scribbled  down  are  often  better  ones  than  I  could  have  20 
written  deliberately. 

Having  said  thus  much  about  my  manner  of  writing,  I 
will  add  that  with  my  large  books  I  spent  a  good  deal  of 
time  over  the  general  arrangement  of  the  matter.  I  first 
made  the  rudest  outline  in  two  or  three  pages,  and  then  a  25 
larger  one  in  several  pages,  a  few  words  or  one  word  stand- 
ing for  a  whole  discussion  or  series  of  facts.  Each  one  of 
these  headings  is  again  enlarged  and  often  transferred 
before  I  begin  to  write  in  extenso.  As,  in  several  of  my 
books,  facts  observed  by  others  have  been  very  extensively  30 
used,  and  as  I  have  always  had  several  quite  distinct 
subjects  in  hand  at  the  same  time,  I  may  mention  that  I 
keep  from  thirty  to  forty  large  portfolios,  in  cabinets  with 
labelled  shelves,  into  which  I  can  at  once  put  a  detached 


NARRATION  359 

reference  or  memorandum.  I  have  bought  many  books, 
and  at  their  ends  I  make  an  index  of  all  the  facts  that 
concern  my  work:  or.  if  the  book  is  not  my  own,  write  out 
a  separate  abstract,  and  of  such  abstracts  I  have  a  large 
5  drawer  full.  Before  beginning  on  any  subject  I  look  to  all 
the  short  indexes  and  make  a  general  and  classified  index, 
and  by  taking  the  one  or  more  proper  portfolios  I  have  all 
the  information  collected  during  my  life  ready  for  use. 
I  have  said  that  in  one  respect  my  mind  has  changed 

10  during  the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years.  Up  to  the  age  of 
thirty,  or  beyond  it,  poetry  of  many  kinds,  such  as  the 
works  of  Milton,  Gray,  Byron,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge, 
and  Shelley,  gave  me  great  pleasure,  and  even  as  a  school- 
boy I  took  intense  delight  in  Shakespeare,  especially  in 

15  the  historical  plays.  I  have  also  said  that  formerly 
pictures  gave  me  considerable,  and  music  very  great 
delight.  But  now  for  many  years  I  cannot  endure  to  read 
a  line  of  poetry:  I  have  tried  lately  to  read  Shakespeare, 
and  found  it  so  intolerably  dull  that  it  nauseated  me.     I 

20  have  also  lost  my  taste  for  pictures  or  music.  Music 
generally  sets  me  thinking  too  energetically  on  what  I 
have  been  at  work  on,  instead  of  giving  me  pleasure.  I 
retain  some  taste  for  fine  scenery,  but  it  does  not  cause  me 
the  exquisite  delight  which  it  formerly  did.     On  the  other 

25  hand,  novels  which  are  works  of  the  imagination,  though 
not  of  a  very  high  order,  have  been  for  years  a  wonderful 
relief  and  pleasure  to  me,  and  I  often  bless  all  novelists. 
A  surprising  number  have  been  read  aloud  to  me,  and  I 
like  all  if  moderately  good,  and  if  they  do  not  end  unhappi- 

30  ly — against  which  a  law  ought  to  be  passed.  A  novel, 
according  to  my  taste,  does  not  come  into  the  first  class 
unless  it  contains  some  person  whom  one  can  thoroughly 
love,  and  if  a  pretty  woman  all  the  better. 

This  curious  and  lamentable  loss  of  the  higher  esthetic 


360  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

tastes  is  all  the  odder,  as  books  on  history,  biographies,  and 
travels  (independently  of  any  scientific  facts  which  they 
may  contain),  and  essays  on  all  sorts  of  subjects  interest 
me  as  much  as  ever  they  did.  My  mind  seems  to  have 
become  a  kind  of  machine  for  grinding  general  laws  out  of  5 
large  collections  of  facts,  but  why  this  should  have  caused 
the  atrophy  of  that  part  of  the  brain  alone,  on  which  the 
higher  tastes  depend,  I  cannot  conceive.  A  man  with  a 
mind  more  highly  organized  or  better  constituted  than 
mine,  would  not,  I  suppose,  have  thus  suffered;  and  if  I  10 
had  to  live  my  life  again,  I  would  have  made  a  rule  to  read 
some  poetry  and  listen  to  some  music  at  least  once  every 
week;  for  perhaps  the  parts  of  my  brain  now  atrophied 
would  thus  have  been  kept  active  through  use.  The  loss 
of  these  tastes  is  a  loss  of  happiness,  and  may  possibly  be  15 
injurious  to  the  intellect,  and  more  probably  to  the 
moral  character,  by  enfeebling  the  emotional  part  of 
our  nature. 

My  books  have  sold  largely  in  England,  have  been 
translated  into  many  languages,  and  passed  through  several  20 
editions  in  foreign  countries.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  the 
success  of  a  work  abroad  is  the  best  test  of  its  enduring 
value.  I  doubt  whether  this  is  at  all  trustworthy;  but 
judged  by  this  standard  my  name  ought  to  last  for  a  few 
years.  Therefore  it  may  be  worth  while  to  try  to  analyze  25 
the  mental  qualities  and  the  conditions  on  which  my  suc- 
cess has  depended;  though  I  am  aware  that  no  man  can 
do  this  correctly. 

I  have  no  great  quickness  of  apprehension  or  wit  which 
is  so  remarkable  in  some  clever  men,  for  instance,  Huxley.  30 
I  am  therefore  a  poor  critic:  a  paper  or  book,  when  first 
read,  generally  excites  my  admiration,  and  it  is  only  after 
considerable  reflection  that  I  perceive  the  weak  points. 
My  power  to  follow  a  long  and  purely  abstract  train  of 


NARRATION  361 

thought  is  very  limited;  and  therefore  I  could  never  have 
succeeded  with  metaphysics  or  mathematics.  My  memory 
is  extensive,  yet  hazy:  it  suffices  to  make  me  cautious  by 
vaguely  telling  me  that  I  have  observed  or  read  something 
5  opposed  to  the  conclusion  which  I  am  drawing,  or  on  the 
other  hand  in  favor  of  it;  and  after  a  time  I  can  generally 
recollect  where  to  search  for  my  authority.  So  poor  in 
one  sense  is  my  memory,  that  I  have  never  been  able  to 
remember  for  more  than  a  few  days  a  single  date  or  line 

10  of  poetry. 

Some  of  my  critics  have  said,  "Oh,  he  is  a  good  observer, 
but  he  has  no  power  of  reasoning!"  I  do  not  think  that 
this  can  be  true,  for  the  Origin  of  Species  is  one  long 
argument  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  it  has  con- 

15  vinced  not  a  few  able  men.  No  one  could  have  written 
it  without  having  some  power  of  reasoning.  I  have  a  fair 
share  of  invention,  and  of  common  sense  or  judgment, 
such  as  every  fairly  successful  lawyer  or  doctor  must  have, 
but  not,  I  believe,  in  any  higher  degree. 

20  On  the  favorable  side  of  the  balance,  I  think  that  I  am 
superior  to  the  common  run  of  men  in  noticing  things  which 
easily  escape  attention,  and  in  observing  them  carefully. 
My  industry  has  been  nearly  as  great  as  it  could  have  been 
in  the  observation  and  collection  of  facts.     What  is  far 

25  more  important,  my  love  of  natural  science  has  been  steady 
and  ardent. 

This  pure  love  has,  however,  been  much  aided  by  the 
ambition  to  be  esteemed  by  my  fellow  naturalists.  From 
my  early  youth  I  have  had  the  strongest  desire  to  under- 

30  stand  or  explain  whatever  I  observed, — that  is,  to  group 
all  facts  under  some  general  laws.  These  causes  com- 
bined have  given  me  the  patience  to  reflect  or  ponder  for 
any  number  of  years  over  an  unexplained  problem.  As 
far  as  I  can  judge,  I  am  not  apt  to  follow  blindly  the  lead 


362  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

of  other  men.  I  have  steadily  endeavored  to  keep  my 
mind  free  so  as  to  give  up  any  hypothesis,  however  much 
beloved,  (and  I  cannot  resist  forming  one  on  every  subject), 
as  soon  as  facts  are  shown  to  be  opposed  to  it.  Indeed,  I 
have  had  no  choice  but  to  act  in  this  manner,  for  with  the  5 
exception  of  the  Coral  Reefs,  I  cannot  remember  a  single 
first-formed  hypothesis  which  had  not  after  a  time  to  be 
given  up  or  greatly  modified.  This  has  naturally  led  me 
to  distrust  greatly  deductive  reasoning  in  the  mixed  sci- 
ences. On  the  other  hand,  I  am  not  very  sceptical, — a  10 
frame  of  mind  which  I  believe  to  be  injurious  to  the 
progress  of  science.  A  good  deal  of  scepticism  in  a 
scientific  man  is  advisable  to  avoid  much  loss  of  time,  for 
T  have  met  with  not  a  few  men,  who,  I  feel  sure,  have  often 
thus  been  deterred  from  experiment  or  observations,  which  l  > 
would  have  proved  directly  or  indirectly  serviceable. 

My  habits  are  methodical,  and  this  has  been  of  not  a 
little  use  for  my  particular  line  of  work.  Lastly,  I  have 
had  ample  leisure  from  not  having  to  earn  my  own  bread. 
Even  ill-health,  though  it  has  annihilated  several  years  of  80 
my  life,  has  saved  me  from  the  distractions  of  society  and 
amusement. 

Therefore  my  success  as  a  man  of  science,  whatever  this 
may  have  amounted  to,  has  been  determined,  as  far  as  I 
can  judge,  by  complex  and  diversified  mental  qualities  25 
and  conditions.  Of  these,  the  most  important  have  been — 
the  love  of  science — unbounded  patience  in  long  reflecting 
over  any  subject — industry  in  observing  and  collecting 
facts — and  a  fair  share  of  invention  as  well  as  of  common 
sense.  With  such  moderate  abilities  as  I  possess,  it  is  30 
truly  surprising  that  I  should  have  influenced  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  the  belief  of  scientific  men  on  some  im- 
portant points. 


NARRATION  363 

Suggestions:  The  striking  characteristic  of  this  narrative  is 
its  extraordinary  simplicity  and  modesty.  What  do  you  think 
of  Darwin's  opinion  of  his  own  style?  What,  of  his  statement: 
"I  have  taken  no  pains  about  my  style  of  writing." 

What  is  your  general  impression  of  the  autobiography? 
What  are  the  sources  of  this  impression?  What  literary  char- 
acteristic of  the  narrative  should  you  wish  particularly  to  imitate  ? 

ADAPTED  SUBJECT 
Write  your  own  autobiography. 


A  HOLIDAY* 

Kenneth  Grahame 

THE  masterful  wind  was  up  and  out,  shouting  and 
chasing,  the  lord  of  the  morning.  Poplars  swayed 
and  tossed  with  a  roaring  swish;  dead  leaves  sprang  aloft, 
and  whirled  into  space;  and  all  the  clear-swept  heaven 

5  seemed  to  thrill  with  sound  like  a  great  harp.  It  was  one 
of  the  first  awakenings  of  the  year.  The  earth  stretched 
herself,  smiling  in  her  sleep;  and  everything  leapt  and 
pulsed  to  the  stir  of  the  giant's  movement.  With  us  it  was 
a  whole  holiday;  the  occasion  a  birthday — it  matters  not 

10  whose.  Some  one  of  us  had  had  presents,  and  pretty  con- 
ventional speeches,  and  had  glowed  with  that  sense  of 
heroism  which  is  no  less  sweet  that  nothing  has  been  done 
to  deserve  it.  But  the  holiday  was  for  all,  the  rapture  of 
awakening  Nature  for  all,  the  various  out-door  joys  of 

15  puddles  and  sun  and  hedge- breaking  for  all.     Colt-like  I 

ran  through  the  meadows,  frisking  happy  heels  in  the  face 

of  Nature  laughing  responsive.     Above,  the  sky  was  bluest 

of  the  blue;  wide  pools  left  by  the  winter's  floods  flashed 

♦From  The  Golden  Age,  John  Lane  Company.     1897.    Selected. 


364  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

the  color  back,  true  and  brilliant;  and  the  soft  air  thrilled 
with  the  germinating  touch  that  seemed  to  kindle  some- 
thing in  my  own  small  person  as  well  as  in  the  rash  prim- 
rose already  lurking  in  sheltered  haunts.  Out  into  the 
brimming  sun-bathed  world  I  sped,  free  of  lessons,  free  5 
of  discipline  and  correction,  for  one  day  at  least.  My 
legs  ran  of  themselves,  and  though  I  heard  my  name  called 
faint  and  shrill  behind,  there  was  no  stopping  for  me.  It 
was  only  Harold,  I  concluded,  and  his  legs,  though  shorter 
than  mine,  were  good  for  a  longer  spurt  than  this.  Then  10 
I  heard  it  called  again,  but  this  time  more  faintly,  with  a 
pathetic  break  in  the  middle;  and  I  pulled  up  short, 
recognizing  Charlotte's  plaintive  note. 

She  panted  up  anon,  and  dropped  on  the  turf  beside 
me.     Neither  had  any  desire  for  talk;  the  glow  and  the   15 
glory  of  existing  on  this  perfect  morning  were  satisfaction 
full  and  sufficient. 

"Where's  Harold?"  I  asked  presently. 

"Oh,   he's   just  playin'   muffin-man,   as  usual,"   said 
Charlotte  with  petulance.     "  Fancy  wanting  to  be  a  muf-  20 
fin-man  on  a  whole  holiday!" 

It  was  a  strange  craze,  certainly;  but  Harold,  who  in- 
vented his  own  games  and  played  them  without  assistance, 
always  stuck  staunchly  to  a  new  fad,  till  he  had  worn  it 
quite  out.  Just  at  present  he  was  a  muffin-man,  and  day  25 
and  night  he  went  through  passages  and  up  and  down 
staircases,  ringing  a  noiseless*  bell  and  offering  phantom 
muffins  to  invisible  wayfarers.  It  sounds  a  poor  sort  of 
sport;  and  yet — to  pass  along  busy  streets  of  your  own 
building,  for  ever  ringing  an  imaginary  bell  and  offering  30 
airy  muffins  of  your  own  make  to  a  bustling  thronging 
crowd  of  your  own  creation — there  were  points  about  the 
game,  it  cannot  be  denied,  though  it  seemed  scarce  in 
harmony  with  this  radiant  wind-swept  morning! 


NARRATION  365 

"And  Edward,  where  is  he?"  I  questioned  again. 

"He's  coming  along  by  the  road,"  said  Charlotte. 
"He'll  be  crouching  in  the  ditch  when  we  get  there,  and 
he's  going  to  be  a  grizzly  bear  and  spring  out  on  us,  only 
5  you  mustn't  say  I  told  you,  'cos  it's  to  be  a  surprise." 

"All  right,"  I  said  magnanimously.  "Come  on  and 
let's  be  surprised."  But  I  could  not  help  feeling  that  on 
this  day  rtf  days  even  a  grizzly  felt  misplaced  and  common. 

Sure  enough  an  undeniable  bear  sprang  out  on  us  as  we 
10  dropped  into  the  road;  then  ensued  shrieks,  growlings, 
revolver-shots,  and  unrecorded  heroisms,  till  Edward  con- 
descended at  last  to  roll  over  and  die,  bulking  large  and 
grim,  an  unmitigated  grizzly.  It  was  an  understood  thing, 
that  whoever  took  upon  himself  to  be  a  bear  must  eventual- 
15  ly  die,  sooner  or  later,  even  if  he  were  the  eldest  born;  else, 
life  would  have  been  all  strife  and  carnage,  and  the  Age  of 
Acorns  have  displaced  our  hard-won  civilization.  This 
little  affair  concluded  with  satisfaction  to  all  parties  con- 
cerned, we  rambled  along  the  road,  picking  up  the  default- 
20  ing  Harold  by  the  way,  muffinless  now  and  in  his  right  and 
social  mind. 

"What  would  you  do?"  asked  Charlotte  presently, — 
the  book  of  the  moment  always  dominating  her  thoughts 
until  it  was  sucked  dry  and  cast  aside, — "what  would  you 
25  do  if  you  saw  two  lions  in  the  road,  one  on  each  side,  and 
you  didn't  know  if  they  was  loose  or  if  they  was  chained 
up?" 

"Do?'  shouted  Edward,  valiantly,  "I  should — I  should 
— I  should — "  His  boastful  accents  died  away  into  a 
30  mumble:  "Dunno  what  I  should  do." 

"Shouldn't  do  anything,"  I  observed  after  considera- 
tion; and  really  it  would  be  difficult  to  arrive  at  a  wiser 
conclusion. 

"If  it  came  to  doing, ^^  remarked  Harold,  reflectively, 


366  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"the  lions  would  do  all  the  doing  there  was  to  do,  wouldn't 
they?" 

"But  if  they  was  good  lions,"  rejoined  Charlotte,  "they 
would  do  as  they  would  be  done  by." 

"Ah,  but  how  are  you  to  know  a  good  lion  from  a  bad  5 
one?"  said  Edward.     "The  books  don't  tell  you  at  all, 
and  the  lions  ain't  marked  any  different. " 

"Why,  there  aren't  any  good  lions, "  said  Harold,  hastily. 

"Oh,  yes,  there  are,  heaps  and  heaps,"  contradicted 
Edward.     "Nearly  all  the  lions  in  the  story-books  are  good   10 
lions.     There  was  Androcles'  lion,  and  St.  Jerome's  lion, 
and — and — the  Lion  and  the  Unicorn " 

"He  beat  the  Unicorn,"  observed  Harold,  dubiously, 
"all  round  the  town." 

"That  proves  he   was   a  good   lion,"   cried   Edward,   15 
triumphantly.     "But  the  question  is,  how  are  you  to  tell 
'em  when  you  see  'em?" 

"/  should  ask  Martha,"  said  Harold  of  the  simple  creed. 

Edward  snorted  contemptuously,  then  turned  to  Char- 
lotte. " Look  here, "  he  said ;  "let's  play  at  lions,  anyhow,  20 
and  I'll  run  on  to  that  corner  and  be  a  lion, — I'll  be  two 
lions,  one  on  each  side  of  the  road, — and  you'll  come  along, 
and  you  won't  know  whether  I'm  chained  up  or  not,  and 
that'll  be  the  fun!" 

"No,  thank  you,"  said  Charlotte,  firmly;  "you'll  be  25 
chained  up  till  I'm  quite  close  to  you,  and  then  you'll  be 
loose,  and  you'll  tear  me  in  pieces,  and  make  my  frock  all 
dirty,  and  p'raps  you'll  hurt  me  as  well.     /  know  your 
lions!" 

"No,  I  won't;  I  swear  I  won't,"  protested  Edward.   30 
"I'll  be  quite  a  new  lion  this  time, — something  you  can't 
even  imagine. "     And  he  raced  off  to  his  post.     Charlotte 
hesitated;  then  she  went  timidly  on,  at  each  step  growing 
less  Charlotte,  the  mummer  of  a  minute,  and  more  the 


NARRATION  367 

anxious  Pilgrim  of  all  time.  The  lion's  wrath  waxed  terri- 
ble at  her  approach;  his  roaring  filled  the  startled  air.  I 
waited  until  they  were  both  thoroughly  absorbed,  and  then 
I  slipped  l^hrough  the  hedge  out  of  the  trodden  highway, 
5  into  the  vacant  meadow  spaces.  It  was  not  that  I  was 
unsociable,  nor  that  I  knew  Edward's  lions  to  the  point  of 
satiety;  but  the  passion  and  the  call  of  the  divine  morning 
were  high  in  my  blood.  Earth  to  earth!  That  was  the 
frank  note,  the  joyous  summons  of  the  day;  and  they  could 
10  not  but  jar  and  seem  artificial,  these  human  discussions 
and  pretences,  when  boon  Nature,  reticent  no  more,  was 
singing  that  full-throated  song  of  hers  that  thrills  and 
claims  control   of   every  fibre. 

All  the  time  the  hearty  wind  was  calling  to  me  compan- 

15  ionably  from  where  he  swung  and  bellowed  in  the  tree- 
tops.     "Take  me  for  guide  to-day,"  he  seemed  to  plead. 

So  we  sheered 

off  together,  so  to  speak;  and  with  fullest  confidence  I  took 
the  jigging,  thwartwise  course  my  chainless  pilot  laid  for  me. 

20  A  whimsical  comrade  I  found  him,  ere  he  had  done  with 
me.  Was  it  in  jest,  or  with  some  serious  purpose  of  his 
own,  that  he  brought  me  plump  upon  a  pair  of  lovers, 
silent,  face  to  face  o'er  a  discreet  unwinking  stile  .'^  As  a 
rule  this  sort  of  thing  struck  me  as  the  most  pitiful  tom- 

25  foolery.  Two  calves  rubbing  noses  through  a  gate  were 
natural  and  right  and  within  the  order  of  things;  but  that 
human  beings,  with  salient  interests  and  active  pursuits 
beckoning  them  on  from  every  side,  could  thus — !  Well, 
it  was  a  thing  to  hurry  past,  shamed  of  face,  and  think  on 

30  no  more.  But  this  morning  everything  I  met  seemed  to 
be  accounted  for  and  set  in  tune  by  that  same  magical 
touch  in  the  air;  and  it  was  with  a  certain  surprise  that  I 
found  myself  regarding  these  fatuous  ones  with  kindliness 


368  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

instead  of  contempt,  as  I  rambled  by,  unheeded  of  them. 
There  was  indeed  some  reconciUng  influence  abroad,  which 
could  bring  the  like  antics  into  harmony  with  bud  and 
growth  and  the  frolic  air. 

He  was  tugging  at  me  anew,  my  insistent  guide;  and  I  5 
felt  sure,  as  I  rambled  off  in  his  wake,  that  he  had  more 
holiday  matter  to  show  me.     And  so,  indeed,  he  had ;  and 
all  of  it  was  to  the  same  lawless  tune.     Like  a  black  pirate 
flag  on  the  blue  ocean  of  air,  a  hawk  hung  ominous;  then, 
plummet- wise,  dropped  to  the  hedgerow,  whence  there   IC 
rose,  thin  and  shrill,  a  piteous  voice  of  squealing.     By 
the  time  I  got  there  a  whisk  of  feathers  on  the  turf — like 
scattered  playbills — was  all  that  remained  to  tell  of  the 
tragedy  just  enacted.     Yet  Nature  smiled  and  sang  on, 
pitiless,  gay,  impartial.     To  her,  who  took  no  sides,  there   15 
was  every  bit  as  much  to  be  said  for  the  hawk  as  for  the 
chaffinch.     Both  were  her  children,  and  she  would  show 
no  preferences. 

My  invisible  companion  was  singing  also,  and  seemed  at 
times  to  be  chuckling  softly  to  himself,  doubtless  at  thought  :^0 
of  the  strange  new  lessons  he  was  teaching  me;  perhaps, 
too,  at  a  special  bit  of  waggishness  he  had  still  in  store. 
For  when  at  last  he  grew  weary  of  such  insignificant 
earth-bound  company,  he  deserted  me  at  a  certain  spot  I 
knew;  then    dropped,    subsided,    and    slunk    away    into   25 
nothingness.     I  raised  my  eyes,  and  before  me,  grim  and 
lichened,  stood  the  ancient  whipping-post  of  the  village; 
its  sides  fretted   with  the   initials   of  a  generation   that 
scorned  its  mute  lesson,   but  still  clipped   by  the  stout 
rusty  shackles  that  had  tethered  the  wi'ists  of  such  of  that  .'JO 
generation's  ancestors  as  had  dared  to  mock  at  order  and 
law.     Had  I  been  an  infant  Sterne,  here  was  a  grand 


NARRATION  369 

chance  for  sentimental  output!  As  things  were,  I  could 
only  hurry  homeward,  my  moral  tail  well  between  my 
legs,  with  an  uneasy  feeling,  as  I  glanced  back  over  my 
shoulder,  that  there  was  more  in  this  chance  than  met  the 

5  eye. 

And  outside  our  gate  I  found  Charlotte,  alone  and  cry- 
ing. Edward,  it  seemed,  had  persuaded  her  to  hide,  in 
the  full  expectation  of  being  duly  found  and  ecstatically 
pounced  upon;  then  he  had  caught  sight  of  the  butcher's 

0  cart,  and,  forgetting  his  obligations,  had  rushed  off  for  a 
ride.  Harold,  it  further  appeared,  greatly  coveting  tad- 
poles, and  top-heavy  with  the  eagerness  of  possession,  had 
fallen  into  the  pond.  This,  in  itself,  was  nothing;  but  on 
attempting  to  sneak  in  by  the  back  door,  he  had  rendered 

5  up  his  duckweed-bedabbled  person  into  the  hands  of  an 
aunt,  and  had  been  promptly  sent  off  to  bed;  and  this, 
on  a  holiday,  was  very  much.  The  moral  of  the  whipping- 
post was  working  itself  out;  and  I  was  not  in  the  least 
surprised  when,  on  reaching  home,  I  was  seized  upon  and 

0  accused  of  doing  something  I  had  never  even  thought  of. 
And  my  frame  of  mind  was  such,  that  I  could  only  wish 
most  heartily  that  I  had  done  it. 


DOBBIN  OF  OURS* 

William  Makepeace  Thackeray 

CUFF'S  fight  with  Dobbin,  and  the  unexpected  issue 
of  that  contest,  will  long  be  remembered  by  every 
5  man  who  was  educated  at  Dr.  Swishtail's  famous  school. 
The  latter  youth  (who  used  to  be  called  Heigh-ho  Dobbin, 
♦From   Vanity  Fair,  Chapter  v. 


370  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Gee-ho  Dobbin,  and  by  many  other  names  indicative  of 
puerile  contempt)  was  the  quietest,  the  clumsiest,  and,  as  it 
seemed,  the  dullest  of  all  Dr.  Swishtail's  young  gentlemen. 
His  parent  was  a  grocer  in  the  City:  and  it  was  bruited 
abroad  that  he  was  admitted  into  Dr.  Swishtail's  academy  5 
upon  what  are  called  "mutual  principles" — that  is  to  say, 
the  expenses  of  his  board  and  schooling  were  defrayed  by 
his  father  in  goods,  not  money;  and  he  stood  there — ^almost 
at  the  bottom  of  the  school — in  his  scraggy  corduroys  and 
jacket,  through  the  seams  of  which  his  great  big  bones  were  K 
bursting — as  the  representative  of  so  many  pounds  of  tea, 
candles,  sugar,  mottled-soap,  plums  (of  which  a  very  mild 
proportion  was  supplied  for  the  puddings  of  the  establish- 
ment), and  other  commodities.     A  dreadful  day  it  was  for 
young  Dobbin  when  one  of  the  youngsters  of  the  school,   15 
having  run  into  the  town  upon  a  poaching  excursion  for 
hardbake  and  polonies,  espied  the  cart  of  Dobbin  and 
Rudge,  Grocers  and  Oilmen,  Thames  Street,  London,  at 
the  Doctor's  door,  discharging  a  cargo  of  the  wares  in  which 
the  firm  dealt.  20 

Young  Dobbin  had  no  peace  after  that.  The  jokes 
were  frightful,  and  merciless  against  him.  *' Hullo,  Dob- 
bin," one  wag  would  say,  '*  here's  good  news  in  the  paper. 
Sugar  is  ris',  my  boy."  Another  would  set  a  sum — "If  a 
pound  of  mutton-candles  cost  sevenpence-halfpenny,  how  25 
much  must  Dobbin  cost.'^"  and  a  roar  would  follow  from 
all  the  circle  of  young  knaves,  usher  and  all,  who  rightly 
considered  that  the  selling  of  goods  by  retail  is  a  shameful 
and  infamous  practice,  meriting  the  contempt  and  scorn 
of  all  real  gentlemen.  /  30 

"Your  father's  only  a  merchant,  Osborne,"  Dobbin 
said  in  private  to  the  little  boy  who  had  brought  down  the 
storm  upon  him.  At  which  the  latter  replied  haughtily, 
"My  father's  a  gentleman,  and  keeps  his  carriage;"  and 


NARRATION  371 

Mr.  William  Dobbin  retreated  to  a  remote  outhouse  in  the 
playground,  where  he  passed  a  half-holiday  in  the  bitterest 
sadness  and  woe.  Who  among  us  is  there  that  does  not 
recollect  similar  hours  of  bitter,  bitter  childish  grief  ?  Who 
5  feels  injustice;  who  shrinks  before  a  slight;  who  has  a 
sense  of  wrong  so  acute,  and  so  glowing  a  gratitude  for 
kindness,  as  a  generous  boy?  and  how  many  of  those 
gentle  souls  do  you  degrade,  estrange,  torture,  for  the  sake 
of  a  little  loose  arithmetic,  and  miserable  dog-Latin. 

10  Now  William  Dobbin,  from  an  incapacity  to  acquire  the 
rudiments  of  the  above  language,  as  they  are  propounded 
in  that  wonderful  book,  the  Eton  Latin  Grammar,  was 
compelled  to  remain  among  the  very  last  of  Dr.  Swishtail's 
scholars,   and  was   "taken   down"   continually   by   little 

15  fellows  with  pink  faces  and  pinafores  when  he  marched 
up  with  the  lower  form,  a  giant  among  them,  with  down- 
cast, stupefied  look,  his  dog's-eared  primer,  and  his  tight 
corduroys.  High  and  low,  all  made  fun  of  him.  They  sewed 
up  those  corduroys,  tight  as  they  were.     They  cut  his  bed- 

20  strings.  They  upset  buckets  and  benches,  so  that  he  might 
break  his  shins  over  them,  which  he  never  failed  to  do. 
They  sent  him  parcels,  which,  when  opened,  were  found  to 
contain  the  paternal  soap  and  candles.  There  was  no  little 
fellow  but  had  his  jeer  and  joke  at  Dobbin;  and  he  bore 

25  everything  quite  patiently,  and  was  entirely  dumb  and 
miserable. 

Cuff,  on  the  contrary,  was  the  great  chief  and  dandy 
of  the  Swishtail  Seminary.  He  smuggled  wine  in.  He 
fought  the  town-boys.     Ponies  used  to  come  for  him  to 

30  ride  home  on  Saturdays.  He  had  his  top-boots  in  his 
room,  in  which  he  used  to  hunt  in  the  holidays.  He  had  a 
gold  repeater:  and  took  snuff  like  the  Doctor.  He  had 
been  to  the  opera,  and  knew  the  merits  of  the  principal 
actors,  preferring  Mr.  Kean  to  Mr.  Kemble.   He  could 


372  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

knock  you  off  forty  liatin  verses  in  an  hour.  He  could 
make  French  poetry.  What  else  didn't  he  know,  or 
couldn't  he  do  ?  They  said  even  the  Doctor  himself  was 
afraid  of  him. 

Cuff,  the  unquestioned  king  of  the  school,  ruled  over  his  5 
subjects,  and  bullied  them,  with  splendid  superiority. 
This  one  blacked  his  shoes:  that  toasted  his  bread,  others 
would  fag  out,  and  give  him  balls  at  cricket  during  whole 
summer  afternoons.  "Figs"  was  the  fellow  whom  he 
despised  most,  and  with  whom,  though  always  abusing  K 
him,  and  sneering  at  him,  he  scarcely  ever  condescended  to 
hold  personal  communication. 

One  day  in  private,  the  two  young  gentlemen  had  had  a 
difference.     Figs,  alone  in  the  schoolroom,  was  blundering 
over  a  home  letter;  when  Cuff,  entering,  bade  him  go  upon    15 
some  message,  of  which  tarts  were  probably  the  subject. 

"I  can't,"  says  Dobbin;  "I  want  to  finish  my  letter." 

"You  can't!''  says  Mr.  Cuff,  laying  hold  of  that  docu- 
ment (in  which  many  words  were  scratched  out,  many  were 
misspelt,  on  which  had  been  spent  I  don't  know  how  much  20 
thought,  and  labor,  and  tears;  for  the  poor  fellow  was 
writing  to  his  mother,  who  was  fond  of  him,  although  she 
was  a  grocer's  wife,  and  lived  in  a  back  parlor  in  Thames 
Street).  "You  can't"  says  Mr.  Cuff:  "I  should  like  to 
know  why,  pray?  Can't  you  write  to  old  Mother  Figs  25 
to-morrow.'^" 

"Don't  call  names,"  Dobbin  said,  getting  off  the  bench 
very  nervous. 

"Well,  sir,  will  you  go.''"  crowed  the  cock  of  the  school. 

"Put  down  the  letter,"  Dobbin  replied;  "no  gentleman   30 
readth  letterth." 

"Well,  now  will  you  go?"  says  the  other. 

"No,  I  won't.     Don't  strike,  or  I'll  thmash  you,"  roars 
out  Dobbin,  springing  to  a  leaden  inkstand,  and  looking  so 


NARRATION  373 

wicked,  that  Mr.  Cuff  paused,  turned  down  his  coat 
sleeves  again,  put  his  hands  into  his  pockets,  and  walked 
away  with  a  sneer.  But  he  never  meddled  personally 
with  the  grocer's  boy  after  that;  though  we  must  do  him 
5  the  justice  to  say  he  always  spoke  of  Mr.  Dobbin  with 
contempt  behind  his  back. 

Some  time  after  this  interview,  it  happened  that  ]Mr. 
Cuff,  on  a  sunshiny  afternoon,  was  in  the  neighborhood 
of  poor  William  Dobbin,  who  was.  lying  under  a  tree  in 

10  the  playground,  spelling  over  a  favorite  copy  of  the  Arabian 
Nights  Avhich  he  had — apart  from  the  rest  of  the  school, 
who  were  pursuing  their  various  sports — quite  lonely,  and 
almost  happy.  If  people  would  but  leave  children  to 
themselves;  if   teachers    would    cease    to    bully    them;  if 

15  parents  would  not  insist  upon  directing  their  thoughts,  and 
dominating  their  feelings — those  feelings  and  thoughts 
which  are  a  mystery  to  all  (for  how  much  do  you  and  I 
know  of  each  other,  of  our  children,  of  our  fathers,  of  our 
neighbor,  and  how  far  more  beautiful  and  sacred  are  the 

20  thoughts  of  the  poor  lad  or  girl  whom  you  govern  likely  to 
be,  than  those  of  the  dull  and  world-corrupted  person  who 
rules  him  ?)  — if,  I  say,  parents  and  masters  would  leave 
their  children  alone  a  little  more, — small  harm  would  ac- 
crue, although  a  less  quantity  of  as  in  jpronsenti  might  be 

25  acquired. 

Well,  William  Dobbin  had  for  once  forgotten  the  world, 
and  was  away  with  Sindbad  the  Sailor  in  the  Valley  of 
Diamonds,  or  with  Prince  Ahmed  and  the  Fairy  Peribanou 
in  that  delightful  cavern  where  the  Prince  found  her,  and 

30  whither  we  should  all  like  to  make  a  tour;  when  shrill 
cries,  as  of  a  little  fellow  weeping,  woke  up  his  pleasant 
reverie;  and  looking  up,  he  saw  Cuff  before  him,  belabor- 
ing a  little  boy. 

It  was  the  lad  who  had  peached  upon  him  about  the 


S74  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

grocer's  cart;  but  he  bore  little  malice,  not  at  least  toward 
the  young  and  small.  "How  dare  you,  sir,  break  the 
bottle?"  says  CufF  to  the  little  urchin,  swinging  a  yellow 
cricket-stump  over  him. 

The  boy  had  been  instructed  to  get  over  the  playground 
wall  (at  a  selected  spot  where  the  broken  glass  had  been 
removed  from  the  top,,  and  niches  made  convenient  in  the 
brick);  to  run  a  quarter  of  a  mile;  to  purchase  a  pint  of 
rumshrub  on  credit;,  to  brave  all  the  Doctor's  outlying 
spies,  and  to  clamber  back  into  the  playground  again; 
during  the  performance  of  which  feat,  his  foot  had  slipped, 
and  the  bottle  was  broken,  and  the  shrub  had  been  spilt, 
and  his  pantaloons  had  been  damaged,  and  he  appeared 
before  his  employer  a  perfectly  guilty  and  trembling, 
though  harmless,  wretch. 

"  How  dare  you,  sir,  break  it  ?"  says  Cuff;  "you  blunder- 
ing little  thief.  You  drank  the  shrub,  and  now  pretend  to 
have  broken  the  bottle.     Hold  out  your  hand,  sir." 

Down  came  the  stump  with  a  great  heavy  thump  on  the 
child's  hand.  A  moan  followed.  Dobbin  looked  up. 
The  Fairy  Peribanou  had  fled  into  the  inmost  cavern  with 
Prince  Ahmed:  the  Roc  had  whisked  away  Sindbad  the 
Sailor  out  of  the  Valley  of  Diamonds  out  of  sight,  far  into 
the  clouds:  and  there  was  everyday  life  before  honest 
William;  and  a  big  boy  beating  a  little  one  without  cause. 

"Hold  out  your  other  hand,  sir,"  roars  Cuff  to  his  little 
school-fellow,  whose  face  was  distorted  with  pain.  Dobbin 
quivered,  and  gathered  himself  up  in  his  narrow  old 
clothes. 

"Takp  that,  you  little  devil!"  cried  Mr.  Cuff,  and  down 
came  the  wicket  again  on  the  child's  hand. — Don't  be 
horrified,  ladies,  every  boy  at  a  public  school  has  done  it. 
Your  children  will  so  do  and  be  done  by,  in  all  probability. 
— Down  came  the  wicket  again;  and  Dobbin  started  up. 


NARRATION  375 

I  can't  tell  what  his  motive  was.  Torture  m  a  public 
school  is  as  much  licensed  as  the  knout  in  Russia.  It 
would  be  ungentlemanlike  (in  a  manner)  to  resist  it. 
Perhaps  Dobbin's  foolish  soul  revolted  against  that  exer- 

5  cise  of  tyranny;  or  perhaps  he  had  a  hankering  feeling  of 
revenge  in  his  mind,  and  longed  to  measure  himself  against 
that  splendid  bully  and  tyrant,  who  had  all  the  glory,  pride, 
pomp,  circumstance,  banners  flying,  drums  beating, 
guards  saluting,  in  the  place.     Whatever  may  have  been 

10  his  incentive,  however,  up  he  sprang,  and  screamed  out, 
"Hold   off,   Cuff;  don't   bully  that   child   any  more;  or 

I'll " 

"Or  you'll  what?"  Cuff  asked  in  amazement  at  this 
interruption.     "Hold  out  your  hand,  you  little  beast." 

15  "I'll  give  you  the  worst  thrashing  you  ever  had  in  your 
life,"  Dobbin  said,  in  reply  to  the  first  part  of  Cuff's 
sentence;  and  little  Osborne,  gasping  and  in  tears,  looked 
up  with  wonder  and  incredulity  at  seeing  this  amazing 
champion  put  up  suddenly  to  defend  him :  while  Cuff's 

20  astonishment  was  scarcely  less.  Fancy  our  late  monarch 
George  III  when  he  heard  of  the  revolt  of  the  North 
American  colonies:  fancy  brazen  Goliath  when  little 
David  stepped  forward  and  claimed  a  meeting;  and  you 
have  the  feelings  of  Mr.  Reginald  Cuff  when  this  rencontre 

25  was  proposed  to  him. 

"After  school,"  says  he,  of  course;  after  a  pause  and  a 
look,  as  much  as  to  say,  "Make  your  will,  and  communi- 
cate your  last  wishes  to  your  friends  between  this  time  and 
that." 

30  "As  you  please,"  Dobbin  said.  "You  must  be  my 
bottle-holder,  Osborne." 

"Well,  if  you  like,"  little  Osborne  replied;  for  you  see 
his  papa  kept  a  carriage,  and  he  was  rather  ashamed  of  his 
champion. 


S7a  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Yes,  when  the  hour  of  battle  came,  he  was  almost 
ashamed  to  say,  "Go  it,  Figs;"  and  not  a  single  other  boy 
in  the  place  uttered  that  cry  for  the  first  two  or  three  rounds 
of  this  famous  combat,  at  the  commencement  of  which  the 
scientific  Cuff,  with  a  contemptuous  smile  on  his  face,  and  5 
as  light  and  as  gay  as  if  he  was  at  a  ball,  planted  his  blows 
upon  his  adversary,  and  floored  that  unlucky  champion 
three  times  running.  At  each  fall  there  was  a  cheer;  and 
everybody  was  anxious  to  have  the  honor  of  offering  the 
conqueror  a  knee.  10 

"What  a  licking  I  shall  get  when  it's  over,"  young 
Osborne  thought,  picking  up  his  man.  "You'd  best  give 
in,"  he  said  to  Dobbin;  "it's  only  a  thrashing.  Figs,  and 
you  know  I'm  used  to  it. "  But  Figs,  all  whose  limbs  were 
in  a  quiver,  and  whose  nostrils  were  breathing  rage,  put  15 
his  little  bottle-holder  aside,  and  went  in  for  a  fourth  time. 

As  he  did  not  in  the  least  know  how  to  parry  the  blows 
that  were  aimed  at  himself,  and  Cuff  had  begun  the  attack 
on  the  three  preceding  occasions,  without  ever  allowing  his 
enemy  to  strike.  Figs  now  determined  that  he  would  com-  30 
mence  the  engagement  by  a  charge  on  his  own  part;  and 
accordingly,  being  a  left-handed  man,  brought  that  arm 
into  action,  and  hit  out  a  couple  of  times  with  all  his  might 
— once  at  Mr.  Cuff's  left  eye,  and  once  on  his  beautiful 
Roman  nose.  'i5 

Cuff  went  down  this  time,  to  the  astonishment  of  the 
assembly.  "Well  hit,  by  Jove,"  says  little  Osborne,  with 
the  air  of  a  connoisseur,  clapping  his  man  on  the  back. 
"  Give  it  him  with  the  left.  Figs,  my  boy. " 

Figs'  left  made  terrific  play  during  all  the  rest  of  the  30 
combat.     Cuff  went  down  every  time.     At  the  sixth  round, 
there  were  almost  as  many  fellows  shouting  out,  "Go  it, 
Figs,"  as  there  were  youths  exclaiming,  "Go  it.  Cuff." 
At  the  twelfth  round  the  latter  champion  was  all  abroad. 


NARRATION  377 

as  the  saying  is,  and  had  lost  all  presence  of  mind  and  power 
of  attack  or  defence.  Figs,  on  the  contrary,  was  as  calm 
as  a  Quaker.  His  face  being  quite  pale,  his  eyes  shining 
open,  and  a  great  cut  on  his  under  lip  bleeding  profusely, 
5  gave  this  young  fellow  a  fierce  and  ghastly  air,  which 
perhaps  struck  terror  into  many  spectators.  Nevertheless, 
his  intrepid  adversary  prepared  to  close  for  the  thirteenth 
time. 

If  I  had  the  pen  of  a  Napier,  or  a  Bell's  Life,  I  should 

10  like  to  describe  this  combat  properly.  It  was  the  last 
charge  of  the  Guard — (that  is,  it  would  have  been,  only 
Waterloo  had  not  yet  taken  place) — it  was  Ney's  column 
breasting  the  hill  of  La  Haye  Sainte,  bristling  with  ten 
thousand  bayonets,  and  crowned  with  twenty  eagles, — it 

15  was  the  shout  of  the  beef-eating  British,  as  leaping  down 
the  hill  they  rushed  to  hug  the  enemy  in  the  savage  arms 
of  battle, — in  other  words.  Cuff  coming  up  full  of  pluck, 
but  quite  reeling  and  groggy,  the  Fig-merchant  put  in  his 
left  as  usual  on  his  adversary's  nose,  and  sent  him  down 

20  for  the  last  time. 

"I  think  that  will  do  for  him,"  Figs  said,  as  his  opponent 
dropped  as  neatly  on  the  green  as  I  have  seen  Jack  Spot's 
ball  plump  into  the  pocket  at  billiards;  and  the  fact  is, 
when  time  was  called,  Mr.  Reginald  Cuff  was  not  able,  or 

25  did  not  choose,  to  stand  up  again. 

And  now  all  the  boys  set  up  such  a  shout  for  Figs  as 
would  have  made  you  think  he  had  been  their  darling 
champion  through  the  whole  battle;  and  as  absolutely 
brought  Dr.  Swishtail  out  of  his  study,  curious  to  know  the 

30  cause  of  the  uproar.  He  threatened  to  flog  Figs  violently, 
of  course;  but  Cuff,  who  had  come  to  himself  by  this  time, 
and  was  washing  his  wounds,  stood  up  and  said,  "It's  my 
fault,  sir — not  Figs's — not  Dobbin's.  I  was  bullying  a 
little  boy;  and  he  served  me  right."     By  which  mag- 


378  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

iianimous  speech  he  not  only  saved  his  conqueror  a  whip- 
ping, but  got  back  all  his  ascendency  over  the  boys  which 
his  defeat  had  nearly  cost  him. 

Young  Osborne  wrote  home  to  his  parents  an  account 
of  the  transaction.  5 

"Sugarcane  House,  Richmond,  March  18th. 

"Dear  Mama, — I  hope  you  are  quite  well.  I  should  be  much 
obliged  to  you  to  send  me  a  cake  and  five  shillings.  There  has 
been  a  fight  here  between  Cuff  &  Dobbin,  Cuff,  you  know,  w;  s 
the  Cock  of  the  School.  They  fought  thirteen  rounds,  and  DobL :  ■  1 
Licked.  So  Cuff  is  now  Only  Second  Cock,  The  fight  w  ^ . 
about  me.  Cuff  was  licking  me  for  breaking  a  bottle  of  mil!;, 
and  Figs  wouldn't  stand  it.  We  call  him  Figs  because  his  father 
is  a  Grocer — Figs  &  Rudge,  Thames  St.,  City — I  think  as  he 
fought  for  me  you  ought  to  buy  your  Tea  &  Sugar  at  his  15 
father's.  Cuff  goes  home  every  Saturday,  but  can't  this,  be- 
cause he  has  2  Black  Eyes.  He  has  a  white  Pony  to  come  and 
fetch  him,  and  a  groom  in  livery  on  a  bay  mare.  I  wish  my 
Papa  would  let  me  have  a  Pony,  and  I  am 

Your  dutiful  Son,  '  20 

"George  Sedley  Osborne. 

"P.  S. — Give  my  love  to  little  Emmy.     I  am  cutting  her  out 
a  Coach  in  cardboard.     Please  not  a  seed-cake,  but  a  plum-cake.'* 

In  consequence  of  Dobbin's  victory,  his  character  rose 
prodigiously  in  the  estimation  of  all  his  schoolfellows,  and  25 
the  name  of  Figs,  which  had  been  a  byword  of  reproach, 
became  as  respectable  and  popular  a  nickname  as  any 
other  in  use  in  the  school.  "After  all,  it's  not  his  fault 
that  his  father's  a  grocer,"  George  Osborne  said,  who, 
though  a  little  chap,  had  a  very  high  popularity  among  the  30 
Swishtail  youth;  and  his  opinion  was  received  with  great 
applause.  It  was  voted  low  to  sneer  at  Dobbin  about  this 
accident  of  birth.     "Old  Figs"  grew  to  be  a  name  of 


NARRATION  S79 

kindness  and  endearment;  and  the  sneak  of  an  usher 
jeered  at  him  no  longer. 

And  Dobbin's  spirit  rose  with  his  altered  circumstances. 
He  made  wonderful  advances  in  scholastic  learning.  The 
5  superb  Cuff  himself,  at  whose  condescension  Dobbin  could 
only  blush  and  wonder,  helped  him  on  with  his  Latin 
verses;  "coached"  him  in  play-hours:  carried  him  trium- 
phantly out  of  the  little-boy  class  into  the  middle-sized 
form;  and  even  there  got  a  fair  place  for  him.     It  was 

10  discovered,  that  although  dull  at  classical  learning,  at 
mathematics  he  was  uncommonly  quick.  To  the  content- 
ment of  all  he  passed  third  in  algebra,  and  got  a  French 
prize-book  at  the  public  Midsummer  examination.  You 
should  have  seen  his  mother's  face  when  Telemaque  (that 

15  delicious  romance)  was  presented  to  him  by  the  Doctor 
in  the  face  of  the  whole  school  and  the  parents  and  com- 
pany, with  an  inscription  to  Gulielmo  Dobbin.  All  the 
boys  clapped  hands  in  token  of  applause  and  sympathy. 
His   blushes,    his    stumbles,    his   awkwardness,    and   the 

20  number  of  feet  which  he  crushed  as  he  went  back  to  his 
place,  who  shall  describe  or  calculate?  Old  Dobbin, 
his  father,  who  now  respected  him  for  the  first  time,  gave 
him  two  guineas  publicly;  most  of  which  he  spent  in  a 
general  tuckout  for  the  school:  and  he  came  back  in  a 

25  tail-coat  after  the  holidays. 

Dobbin  was  much  too  modest  a  young  fellow  to  suppose 
that  this  happy  change  in  all  his  circumstances  arose  from 
his  own  generous  and  manly  disposition:  he  chose,  from 
some  perverseness,  to  attribute  his  good  fortune  to  the  sole 

30  agency  and  benevolence  of  little  George  Osborne,  to  whom 
henceforth  he  vowed  such  a  love  and  affection  as  is  only 
felt  by  children — such  an  affection,  as  we  read  in  the 
charming  fairy-book,  uncouth  Orson  had  for  splendid 
young  Valentine  his  conqueror.     He  flung  himself  down 


380  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

at  little  Osborne's  feet  and  loved  him.  Even  before  they 
were  acquainted,  he  had  admired  Osborne  in  secret. 
Now  he  was  his  valet,  his  dog,  his  man  Friday.  He  be- 
lieved Osborne  to  be  the  possessor  of  every  perfection,  to 
be  the  handsomest,  the  bravest,  the  most  active,  the  5 
cleverest,  the  most  generous  of  created  boys.  He  shared 
his  money  with  him :  bought  him  uncountable  presents  of 
knives,  pencil-cases,  gold  seals,  toffee,  Little  Warblers,  and 
romantic  books,  with  large  colored  pictures  of  knights  and 
robbers,  in  many  of  which  latter  you  might  read  inscriptions  10 
to  George  Sedley  Osborne,  Esquire,  from  his  attached 
friend  William  Dobbin — the  which  tokens  of  homage 
George  received  very  graciously,  as  became  his  superior 
merit. 


THE  EGYPTIANS* 

George  Borrow 

/^NE  day  it  happened  that,  being  on  my  rambles,  I   15 
^^     entered  a  green  lane  which  I  had  never  seen  before; 
at  first  it  was  rather  narrow,  but  as  I  advanced  it  became 
considerably  wider;  in  the  middle  was  a  driftway  with 
deep  ruts,  but  right  and  left  was  a  space  carpeted  with  a 
sward  of  trefoil  and  clover;  there  was  no  lack  of  trees,   20 
chiefly  ancient  oaks,  which,  flinging  out  their  arms  from 
either  side,  nearly  formed  a  canopy,  and  afforded  a  pleasing 
shelter  from  the  rays  of  the  sun,  which  was  burning  fiercely 
above.     Suddenly  a  group  of  objects  attracted  my  atten- 
tion.    Beneath  one  of  the  largest  of  the  trees,  upon  the  25 
grass,  was  a  kind  of  low  tent  or  booth,  from  the  top  of 
>     *From  Tjavengro,  Chapter  v,  G.  P.  Putman's  Sons,  1900. 


NARRATION  S81 

•  which  a  thin  smoke  was  curling;  beside  it  stood  a  couple 
of  Hght  carts,  while  two  or  three  lean  horses  or  ponies  were 
cropping  the  herbage,  which  was  growing  nigh.  Wonder- 
ing to  whom  this  odd  tent  could  belong,  I  advanced  till  I 

5  was  close  before  it,  when  I  found  that  it  consisted  of  two 
tilts,  like  those  of  wagons,  placed  upon  the  ground  and 
fronting  each  other,  connected  behind  by  a  sail  or  large 
piece  of  canvas,  which  was  but  partially  drawn  across  the 
top;  upon  the  ground,  in  the  intervening  space,  was  a  fire, 

10  over  which,  supported  by  a  kind  of  iron  crowbar,  hung  a 
caldron.  My  advance  had  been  so  noiseless  as  not  to 
alarm  the  inmates,  who  consisted  of  a  man  and  woman, 
who  sat  apart,  one  on  each  side  of  the  fire;  they  were  both 
busily   employed — the   man   was   carding   plaited   straw 

15  while  the  woman  seemed  to  be  rubbing  something  with  a 
white  powder,  some  of  which  lay  on  a  plate  beside  her. 
Suddenly  the  man  looked  up,  and,  perceiving  me,  uttered 
a  strange  kind  of  cry,  and  the  next  moment  both  the 
woman  and  himself  were  on  their  feet  and  rushing  upon  me. 

20  I  retreated  a  few  steps,  yet  without  turning  to  flee.  I 
was  not,  however,  without  apprehension,  which,  indeed, 
the  appearance  of  these  two  people  was  well  calculated  to 
inspire.  The  woman  was  a  stout  figure,  seemingly  be- 
tween thirty  and  forty;  she  wore  no  cap,  and  her* long  hair 

25  fell  on  either  side  of  her  head  like  horse-tails,  half-way 
down  her  waist;  her  skin  was  dark  and  swarthy,  like  that 
of  a  toad,  and  the  expression  of  her  countenance  was 
particularly  evil;  her  arms  were  bare,  and  her  bosom  was 
but  half  concealed  by  a  slight  bodice,  below  which  she 

30  wore  a  coarse  petticoat,  her  only  other  article  of  dress. 
The  man  was  somewhat  younger,  but  of  figure  equally 
wild;  his  frame  was  long  and  lathy,  but  his  arms  were 
remarkably  short,  his  neck  was  rather  bent,  he  squinted 
slightly,  and  his  mouth  was  much  awry;  his  complexion 


382  A  COLLEQE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

was  dark,  but,  unlike  that  of  the  woman,  was  more  ruddy    • 
than  livid;  there  was  a  deep  scar  on  his  cheek,  something 
like  the  impression  of  a  halfpenny.     The  dress  was  quite 
in  keeping  with  the  figure:  in  his  hat,  which  was  slightly 
peaked,  was  stuck  a  peacock's  feather;  over  a  waistcoat  of  5 
hide,  untanned  and  with  the  hair  upon  it,  he  wore  a  rough 
jerkin  of  russet  hue;  smallclothes  of  leather,  which  had 
probably  once  belonged  to  a  soldier,  but  with  which  pipe- 
clay did  not  seem  to  have  come  in  contact  for  many  a  year, 
protected  his  lower  man  as  far  as  the  knee;  his  legs  were   10 
cased  in  long  stockings  of  blue  worsted,  and  on  his  shoes 
he  wore  immense  old-fashioned  buckles. 

Such  were  the  two  beings  who  now  came  rushing  upon 
me;  the  man  was  rather  in  advance,  brandishing  a  ladle 
in  his  hand.  15 

"So  I  have  caught  you  at  last,"  said  he;  "I'll  teach  ye, 
you  young  highwayman,  to  come  skulking  about  my 
properties!" 

Young  as  I  was,  I  remarked  that  his  manner  of  speaking 
was  different  from  that  of  any  people  with  whom  I  had  been  20 
in  the  habit  of  associating.  It  was  quite  as  strange  as  his 
appearance,  and  yet  it  nothing  resembled  the  foreign 
English  which  I  had  been  in  the  habit  of  hearing  through 
the  palisades  of  the  prison;  he  could  scarcely  be  a 
foreigner.  25 

"Your  properties!"  said  I;  "I  am  in  the  King's  Lane. 
Why  did  you  put  them  there,  if  you  did  not  wish  them  to  be 

"On  the  spy,"  said  the  woman,  "hey.^  I'll  drown  him 
in  the  sludge  in  the  toad-pond  over  the  hedge. "  30 

"So  we  will,"  said  the  man,  "drown  him  anon  in  the 
mud!" 

"Drown  me,  will  you?"  said  I;  "I  should  like  to  see 
you !     What's  all  this  about  ?     Was  it  because  I  saw  you 


NARRATION  383 

with  your  hands  full  of  straw  plait,  and  my  mother  there —  " 
"Yes,"  said  the  woman;  "what  was  I  about?" 
Myself:  How  should  I  know?     Making  bad  money, 
perhaps ! 
')       And  it  will  be  as  well  here  to  observe,  that  at  this  time 
there  was  much  bad  money  in  circulation  in  the  neighbor- 
hood, generally  supposed  to  be  fabricated  by  the  prisoners, 
so  that  this  false  coin  and  straw  plait  formed  the  standard 
subjects  of  conversation  at  Norman  Cross. 
10       "I'll  strangle  thee,"  said  the  beldame,  dashing  at  me. 
"Bad  money,  is  it?" 

"Leave  him  to  me,  wifelkin, "  said  the  man,  interposing; 

"you  shall  now  see  how  I'll  baste  him  down  the  lane." 

Myself:  I  tell  you  what,  my  chap,  you  had  better  put 

15   down  that  thing  of  yours;  my  father  lies  concealed  within 

my  tepid  breast,  and  if  to  me  you  offer  any  harm  or  wrong, 

I'll  call  him  forth  to  help  me  with  his  forked  tongue. 

Man:  What  do  you  mean  ye  Bengui's  bantling  ?  I  never 
heard  such  discourse  in  all  my  life;  playman's  speech  or 
20  Frenchman's  talk — which  I  wonder?  Your  father!  tell 
the  mumping  villain  that  if  he  comes  near  my  fire  I'll 
serve  him  out  as  I  will  you.  Take  that — Tiny  Jesus! 
what  have  we  got  here  ?  Oh,  delicate  Jesus !  what  is  the 
matter  with  the  child  ? 
25  I  had  made  a  motion  which  the  viper  understood;  and 
now,  partly  disengaging  itself  from  my  bosom,  where  it  had 
lain  perdu,  it  raised  its  head  to  a  level  with  my  face,  and 
stared  upon  my  enemy  with  its  glittering  eyes.* 

The  man  stood  like  one  transfixed,  and  the  ladle  with 

30  which  he  had  aimed  a  blow  at  me,  now  hung  in  the  air  like 

the  hand  which  led  it;  his  mouth  was  extended,  and  his 

cheeks  became  of  a  pale  yellow,  save  alone  that  place  which 

*In  a  previous  chapter  of  the  book,  Borrow  tells  how  he  had  been 
taught,  by  an  old  half-witted  man,  to  catch  harmless  snakes  and  carry 
them  about  with  him.     [Editor.] 


384  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

bore  the  mark  which  I  have  already  described,  and  this 
shone  now  portentously,  like  fire.  He  stood  in  this  manner 
for  some  time;  at  last  the  ladle  fell  from  his  hand,  and  its 
falling  appeared  to  arouse  him  from  his  stupor. 

'*I  say,  wifelkin,"  said  he  in  a  faltering  tone,  "did  you  5 
ever  see  the  hke  of  this  here.?" 

But  the  woman  had  retreated  to  the  tent,  from  the 
entrance  of  which  her  loathly  face  was  now  thrust,  with  an 
expression  partly  of  terror  and  partly  of  curiosity.  After 
gazing  some  time  longer  at  the  viper  and  myself,  the  man  10 
stooped  down  and  took  up  the  ladle;  then,  as  if  somewhat 
more  assured,  he  moved  to  the  tent,  where  he  entered  into 
conversation  with  the  beldame  in  a  low  voice.  Of  their 
discourse,  though  I  could  hear  the  greater  part  of  it,  I 
understood  not  a  single  word;  and  I  wondered  what  it  15 
could  be,  for  I  knew  by  the  sound  that  it  was  not  French. 
At  last  the  man,  in  a  somewhat  louder  tone,  appeared  to 
put  a  question  to  the  woman,  who  nodded  her  head  aflSrma- 
tively,  and  in  a  moment  or  two  produced  a  small  stool, 
which  she  delivered  to  him.  He  placed  it  on  the  ground,  20 
close  to  the  door  of  the  tent,  first  rubbing  it  with  his  sleeve, 
as  if  for  the  purpose  of  polishing  its  surface. 

Man:  Now,  my  precious  little  gentleman,  do  sit  down 
here  by  the  poor  people's  tent;  we  wish  to  be  civil  in  our 
slight  way.     Don't  be  angry,  and  say  no;  but  look  kin  ily   C3 
upon  us,  and  satisfied,  my  precious  little  God  Almighty. 

Woman:  Yes,  my  gorgious  angel,  sit  down  by  the  poor 
bodies'  fire,  and  eat  a  sweetmeat.  We  want  to  ask  you  a 
question  or  two;  only  first  put  that  serpent  away. 

Myself:  I  can  sit  down,  and  bid  the  serpent  go  to  sleep,  30 
that's  easy  enough;  but  as  for  eating  a  sweetmeat,  how 
can  I  do  that  ?    I  have  not  got  one,  and  where  am  I  to  get 
it? 

Woman:  Never  fear,  my  tiny  tawny,  we  can  give  you 


NARRATION  385 

one,  such  as  you  never  ate,  I  dare  say,  however  far  you 
may  have  come  from. 

The  serpent  sunk  into  its  usual  resting-place,  and  I 
sat  down  on  the  stool.  The  woman  opened  a  box,  and 
5  took  out  a  strange  little  basket  or  hamper,  not  much 
larger  than  a  man's  fist,  and  formed  of  a  delicate  kind  of 
matting.  It  was  sewed  at  the  top;  but,  ripping  it  open 
with  a  knife,  she  held  it  to  me,  and  I  saw  to  my  surprise, 
that  it  contained  candied  fruits  of  a  dark  green  hue,  tempt- 
10  ing  enough  to  one  of  my  age.  "There,  my  tiny,"  said 
she;  "taste,  and  tell  me  how  you  like  them.'* 

"Very  much,"  said  I;  "where  did  you  get  them.?" 

The   beldame  leered   upon   me  for   a  moment,   then, 
nodding  her  head  thrice,  with  a  knowing  look,  said:  "  Who 
15  knows  better  than  yourself,  my  tawny.''" 

Now  I  knew  nothing  about  the  matter;  but  I  saw  that 

these  strange  people  had  conceived  a  very  high  opinion  of 

the  abilities  of  their  visitor,  which  I  was  nothing  loath  to 

encourage.     I  therefore  answered  boldly,  "Ah!  who  in- 

20  deed!" 

"Certainly,"  said  the  man;  "who  should  know  better 
than  yourself,  or  who  so  well  ?  And  now  my  tiny  one,  let 
me  ask  you  one  thing — you  didn't  come  to  do  us  any 
harm?" 
25  "No,"  said  I,  "I  had  no  dislike  to  you;  though,  if  you 
were  to  meddle  with  me " 

Man:  Of  course,  my  gorgious,  of  course  you  would;  and 

quite  right  too.     Meddle  with  you ! — what  right  have  we  ? 

I  should  say  it  would  not  be  quite  safe.     I  see  how  it  is; 

30  you  are  one  of  them  there; — and  he  bent  his  head  toward 

his  left  shoulder. 

Myself:  Yes,  I  am  one  of  them, — ^for  I  thought  he  was 
alluding  to  the  soldiers, — ^you  had  best  mind  what  you  are 
about,  I  can  tell  you. 


386  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Man:  Don't  doubt  we  will  for  our  own  sake;  Lord 
bless  you,  wifelkin,  only  think  that  we  should  see  one  of 
them  there  when  we  least  thought  about  it.  Well  I  have 
heard  of  such  things,  though  I  never  thought  to  see  one; 
however,  seeing  is  believing.  Well!  now  you  are  come,  5 
and  are  not  going  to  do  us  any  mischief,  I  hope  you  will 
stay;  you  can  do  us  plenty  of  good  if  you  will. 

Myself:  What  good  can  I  do  you  .^ 

Man:  What  good  .^  plenty!  Would  you  not  bring  us 
luck?  I  have  heard  say,  that  one  of  them  there  always  10 
does,  if  it  will  but  settle  down.  Stay  with  us,  you  shall 
have  a  tilted  cart  all  to  yourself  if  you  like.  We'll  make 
you  our  little  God  Almighty,  and  say  our  prayers  to  you 
every  morning! 

Myself:  That  would  be  nice;  and  if  you  were  to  give  15 
me  plenty  of  these  things  I  should  have  no  objection. 
But  what  would  my  father  say  ?     I  think  he  would  hardly 
let  me. 

Man:  Why  not?  he  would   be  with  you;  and  kindly 
would  we  treat  him.     Indeed,  without  your  father  you   20 
would  be  nothing  at  all. 

Myself:  That's  true;  but  I  do  not  think  he  could  be 
spared  from  his  regiment.  I  have  heard  him  say  that  they 
could  do  nothing  without  him. 

Man:  His  regiment!     What  are  you  talking  about? —  25 
what  does  the  child  mean  ? 

Myself:  What  do  I  mean!  why,  that  my  father  is  an 
officer-man  at  the  barracks  yonder,  keeping  guard  over  the 
French  prisoners. 

Man:  Oh!  then  that  sap  is  not  your  father?  30 

Myself:  What,  the  snake?  Why,  no!  Did  you  think 
he  was? 

Man:  To  be  sure  we  did.     Didn't  you  tell  me  so? 

Myself:  Why,  yes;  but  who  would  have  thought  you 


NARRATION  387 

would  have  believed  it  ?     It  is  a  tame  one.     I  hunt  vipers 
and  tame  them. 

Man:  O h! 

"O h!"  grunted  the  woman,  "that's  it,  is  it?" 

5  The  man  and  woman,  who  during  this  conversation  had 
resumed  their  former  positions  within  the  tent,  looked  at 
each  other  with  a  queer  look  of  surprise,  as  if  somewhat 
disconcerted  at  what  they  now  heard.  They  then  entered 
into  discourse  with  each  other  in  the  same  strange  tongue 

10  which  had  already  puzzled  me.  At  length  the  man  looked 
me  in  the  face,  and  said,  somewhat  hesitatingly,  "So  you 
are  not  one  of  them  there,  after  all  V 

Myself:  One  of  them  there?  I  don't  know  what  you 
mean. 

15  Man:  Why,  we  have  been  thinking  you  were  a  goblin — 
a  devilkin !  However  I  see  how  it  is :  you  are  a  sap-engro, 
a  chap  who  catches  snakes  and  plays  tricks  with  them! 
Well,  it  comes  very  nearly  to  the  same  thing;  and  if  you 
please  to  list  with  us  and  bear  us  pleasant  company,  we 

20  shall  be  glad  of  you.  I'd  take  my  oath  upon  it  that  we 
might  make  a  mort  of  money  by  you  and  that  sap,  and  the 
tricks  it  could  do;  and,  as  you  seem  fly  to  everything,  I 
shouldn't  wonder  if  you  would  make  a  prime  hand  at  tell- 
ing fortunes. 

25       "I  shouldn't  wonder,"  said  I. 

Man:  Of  course.  And  you  might  still  be  our  God 
Almighty,  or  at  any  rate  our  clergyman,  so  you  should 
live  in  a  tilted  cart  by  yourself  and  say  prayers  to  us 
night  and  morning — to  wifelkin  here,  and  all  our  family; 

30  there's  plenty  of  us  when  we  are  all  together;  as  I  said 

before,  you  seem  fly,  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  you  could  read. 

"Oh,  yes!"  said  I,  "I  can  read;"  and,  eager  to  display 

my  accomplishments,  I  took  my  book  out  of  my  pocket, 

and  opening  it  at  random,  proceeded  to  read  how  a  certain 


S88  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

man  while  wandering  about  a  certain  solitary  island, 
entered  a  cave,  the  mouth  of  which  was  overgrown  with 
brushwood,  arid  how  he  was  nearly  frightened  to  death 
in  that  cave  by  something  which  he  saw. 

"That  will  do,"  said  the  man;  "that's  the  kind  of  5 
prayers  for  me  and  my  family,  ar'n't  they,  wifelkin  ?  I 
never  heard  more  delicate  prayers  in  all  my  life!  Why, 
they  beat  the  rilbricals  hollow! — and  here  comes  my  son 
Jasper.  I  say,  Jasper,  here's  a  young  sap-engro  that  can 
read,  and  is  more  fly  than  yourself.  Shake  hands  with  10 
him;  I  wish  ye  to  be  two  brothers." 

With  a  swift  but  stealthy  pace  Jasper  came  toward  us 
from  the  farther  part  of  the  lane;  on  reaching  the  tent  he 
stood  still  and  looked  fixedly  upon  me  as  I  sat  upon  the 
stool;  I  looked  fixedly  upon  him.  A  queer  look  had  15 
Jasper;  he  was  a  lad  of  some  twelve  or  thirteen  years, 
with  long  arms,  unlike  the  singular  being  who  called  him- 
self his  father;  his  complexion  was  ruddy,  but  his  face  was 
seamed,  though  it  did  not  bear  the  peculiar  scar  which 
disfigured  the  countenance  of  the  other;  nor,  though  20 
roguish  enough,  a  certain  evil  expression  which  that  of  the 
other  bore,  and  which  the  face  of  the  woman  possessed  in 
a  yet  more  remarkable  degree.  For  the  rest,  he  wore 
drab  breeches,  with  certain  strings  at  the  knee,  a  rather 
gay  waistcoat,  and  tolerably  white  shirt;  under  his  arm  25 
he  bore  a  mighty  whip  of  whalebone  with  a  brass  knob, 
and  upon  his  head  was  a  hat  without  either  top  or  brim. 

"There,  Jasper!  shake  hands,  with  the  sap-engro.*' 

"Can   he   box,   father?"   said    Jasper,     surveying   me 
rather  contemptuously.     "I  should  think  not,  he  looks  so  30 
puny  and  small.'* 

"Hold  your  peace,  fool!  said  the  man;  "he  can  do  more 
than  that — I  tell  you  he's  fly;  he  carries  a  sap  about,  which 
would  sting  a  ninny  like  you  to  dead. " 


NARRATION  389 

"What,  a  sap-engro!"  said  the  boy,  with  a  singular 
whine,  and,  stooping  down,  he  leered  curiously  in  my  face, 
kindly,  however,  and  then  patted  me  on  the  head.  "A 
sap-engro,"  he  ejaculated;     "lor!" 

5       "Yes,  and  one  of  the  right  sort,"  said  the  man;  "I  am 

glad  we  have  met  with  him;  he  is  going  to  list  with  us,  and 

be  our  clergyman  and  God  Almighty,  a'n't  you,  my  tawny  ?  " 

"I  don't  know,"  said  I;  "I  must  see  what  my  father 

will  say." 

10  "Your  father;  bah!" — but  here  he  stopped,  for  a  sound 
was  heard  like  the  rapid  galloping  of  a  horse,  not  loud  and 
distinct  as  on  a  road,  but  dull  and  heavy  as  if  upon  a  grass 
sward;  nearer  and  nearer  it  came,  and  the  man,  starting 
up,  rushed  out  of  the  tent,  and  looked  around  anxiously. 

15  I  arose  from  the  stool  upon  which  I  had  been  seated,  and 
just  at  that  moment,  amidst  a  crashing  of  boughs  and  sticks 
a  man  on  horseback  bounded  over  the  hedge  into  the  lane 
at  a  few  yards'  distance  from  where  we  were;  from  the 
impetus  of  the  leap  the  horse  was  nearly  down  on  his  knees ; 

20  the  rider  however,  by  dint  of  vigorous  handling  of  the 
reins,  prevented  him  from  falling,  and  then  rode  up  to  the 
tent.  "'Tis  Nat,"  said  the  man;  "what  brings  him 
here?"  The  new  comer  was  a  stout  burly  fellow,  about 
the  middle-age;  he  had  a  savage,  determined  look,  and 

25  his  face  was  nearly  covered  over  with  carbuncles;  he  wore 
a  broad  slouching  hat,  and  was  dressed  in  a  gray  coat,  cut 
in  a  fashion  which  I  afterward  learned  to  be  the  genuine 
Newmarket  cut,  the  skirts  being  exceedingly  short;  his 
waistcoat  was  of  red  plush,  and  he  wore  broad  corduroy 

30  breeches  and  white  top  boots.  The  steed  which  carried 
him  was  of  iron  gray,  spirited  and  powerful,  but  covered 
with  sweat  and  foam.  The  fellow  glanced  fiercely  and 
suspiciously  around,  and  said  something  to  the  man  of  the 
tent  in  a  harsh  and  rapid  voice.     A  short  and  hurried 


390  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

conversation  ensued  in  the  strange  tongue.  I  could  not 
take  my  eyes  off  this  new  comer.  Oh,  that  half -jockey, 
half-bruiser  countenance,  I  never  forgot  it!  More  than 
fifteen  years  afterward  I  found  myself  amidst  a  crowd 
before  Newgate;  a  gallows  was  erected,  and  beneath  it  5 
stood  a  criminal,  a  notorious  malefactor.  I  recognized 
him  at  once;  the  horseman  of  the  lane  is  now  beneath  the 
fatal  tree,  but  nothing  altered ;  still  the  same  man ;  jerking 
his  head  to  the  right  and  left  with  the  same  fierce  and 
under  glance,  just  as  if  the  affairs  of  this  world  had  the  10 
same  kind  of  interest  to  the  last;  gray  coat  of  Newmarket 
cut,  plush  waistcoat,  corduroys,  and  boots,  nothing  altered ; 
but  the  head,  alas!  is  bare  and  so  is  the  neck.  Oh,  crime 
and  virtue,  virtue  and  crime! — it  was  old  John  Newton,  I 
think,  who,  when  he  saw  a  man  going  to  be  hanged,  said:  15 
"There  goes  John  Newton,  but  for  the  grace  of  God!" 

But  the  lane,  the  lane,  all  was  now  in  confusion  in  the 
lane;  the  man  and  woman  were  employed  in  striking  the 
tents  and  in  making  hurried  preparations  for  departure; 
the  boy  Jasper  was  putting  the  harness  upon  the  ponies  20 
and  attaching  them  to  the  carts;  and,  to  increase  the 
singularity  of  the  scene,  two  or  three  wild-looking  women 
and  girls,  in  red  cloaks  and  immense  black  beaver  bonnets, 
came  from  I  know  not  what  direction,  and,  after  exchang- 
ing a  few  words  with  the  others,  commenced  with  fierce  ^5 
and  agitated  gestures  to  assist  them  in  their  occupation. 
The  rider  meanwhile  sat  upon  his  horse,  but  evidently  in  a 
state  of  great  impatience;  he  muttered  curses  between  his 
teeth,  spurred  the  rfnimal  furiously,  and  then  reined  it  in, 
causing  it  to  rear  itself  up  nearly  perpendicular.  At  last  '^0 
he  said :  "  Curse  ye,  for  Romans,  how  slow  ye  are!  well,  it  is 
no  business  of  mine,  stay  here  all  day  if  you  like;  I  have  given 
ye  warning,  I  am  off  to  the  big  north  road.  However, 
before  I  go,  you  had  better  give  me  all  you  have  of  that. " 


NARRATION  391 

"Truly  spoken,  Nat,  my  pal,"  said  the  man;  "give  it 
him,  mother.  There  it  is;  now  be  off  as  soon  as  you 
please,  and  rid  us  of  evil  company." 

The  woman  had  handed  him  two  bags  formed  of 
5  stocking,  half  full  of  something  heavy,  which  looked 
through  them  for  all  the  world  like  money  of  some  kind. 
The  fellow,  on  receiving  them,  thrust  them  without 
ceremony  into  the  pockets  of  his  coat,  and  then  without  a 
word   of  farew^ell   salutation,   departed   at  a  tremendous 

10  rate,  the  hoofs  of  his  horse  thundering  for  a  long  time  on 
the  hard  soil  of  the  neighboring  road,  till  the  sound  finally 
died  away  in  the  distance.  The  strange  people  were  not 
slow  in  completing  their  preparations,  and  then,  flogging 
their  animals  terrifically,  hurried  away  seemingly  in  the 

15  same  direction. 

The  boy  Jasper  was  last  of  the  band.  As  he  was 
following  the  rest,  he  stopped  suddenly,  and  looked  on  the 
ground  appearing  to  muse;  then,  turning  round,  he  came 
up  to  me  where  I  was  standing,  leered  in  my  face,  and  then, 

20  thrusting  out  his  hand,  he  said,  "Good-bye,  Sap,  I  dare 
say  we  shall  meet  again,  remember  we  are  brothers,  two 
gentle  brothers." 

Then  whining  forth,  "What  a  sap-engro,  lor!"  he  gave 
me  a  parting  leer,  and  hastened  away. 

25  I  remained  standing  in  the  lane  gazing  after  the  re- 
treating company.  "A  strange  set  of  people,"  said  I  at 
last,  "I  wonder  who  they  can  be." 

Suggestions:  "A  Holiday"  is  what  is  commonly  called  "nar- 
ration without  plot," — that  is,  we  are  concerned,  not  so  much 
with  what  happens,  as  with  the  characters  of  the  children,  and 
in  particular  with  the  mood  of  the  narrator. 

From  whose  point  of  view  is  the  story  told  ?  What  is  the 
difference  between  this  point  of  view  and  that  in  "Dobbin  of 
Ours  ?"     What  relative  advantages  and  disadvantages  has  each  ? 


392  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Characterize  the  words  in  "A  HoHday."  Pick  out  a  number 
of  words  and  expressions  that  seem  to  you,  for  any  reason, 
distinctive. 

Has  "Dobbin  of  Ours"  a  more  distinct  plot?  Why?  What 
is  the  climax  of  this  narrative?  Just  how  much  surprise  does 
the  reader  feel  over  Dobbin's  victory?  How  is  his  character 
shown?  What  are  some  of  the  means  by  which  Thackeray 
rouses  our  sympathy  for  Dobbin  ? 

What  differences  in  style  and  treatment  do  you  note  between 
these  two  narratives  and  "The  Egyptians?"  What  one  of 
the  three   narratives   do  you  prefer,   and  why? 

Choose  for  the  adapted  theme  some  occurrence  of  your  own 
past  life  that  may  be  treated  in  a  similar  manner.  Try  to  create 
a  fair  amount  of  suspense,  that  is,  emphasize  some  events  and 
eliminate  others,  so  that  your  reader  may  be  not  quite  sure 
beforehand  of  the  outcome.  Decide  carefully  whether  you  will 
tell  the  story  yourself,  in  the  first  person,  or  whether  you  will 
make  some  imaginary  third  person  tell  it. 

ADAPTED   SUBJECTS 

How  I  Ran  Away  from  Home. 

The  Biggest  Fight  I  Ever  Had. 

Afraid  of  the  Dark. 

My  First  Cigar. 

Having  My  Own  Way  and  What  Came  of  It. 

How  We  Went  Swimming. 


A  DOG  IN  EXILE* 
W.  H.  Hudson 

AT  the  English  estate  up  the  river,  where  I  made  so 
long  a  stay,  there  were  several  dogs,  some  of  them 
of  the  common  dog  of  no  breed  found  throughout  Argen- 

♦Ilepriiited  from  Idle  Days  in  Patagonia^  chapter  v,  by  permission 
of  D.  Appleton  &  Company. 


NARRATION  393 

tina,  a  smooth-haired  animal,  varying  greatly  in  color, 
but  oftenest  red  or  black;  also  differing  much  in  size,  but 
in  a  majority  of  cases  about  as  big  as  a  Scotch  collie. 
There  were  also  a  few  others,  dogs  of  good  breeds,  and 
5  these  were  specially  interesting  to  me,  because  they  were 
not  restrained  nor  directed  in  any  way,  nor  any  use  made 
of  them  in  their  special  lines.  Left  to  their  own  devices, 
and  to  rough  it  with  the  others,  the  result  was  rather  curious. 
The  only  one  among  them  that  had  proved  capable  of 

10  accommodating  himself  to  the  new  circumstances  was  a 
Scotch  collie — a  fine  animal  of  pure  blood. 

The  common  dog  of  the  country  is  a  jack-of-all-trades; 
a  great  lover  of  the  chase,  but  a  bad  'hunter,  a  splendid 
scavenger,  a  good  watch  dog  and  vermin-killer;  an  indif- 

15  f erent  sheep  dog,  but  invaluable  in  gathering  up  and  driving 
cattle.  Beyond  these  things  which  he  picks  up,  you  can 
really  teach  him  nothing  useful,  although  with  considerable 
trouble  you  might  be  able  to  add  a  few  ornamental  sub- 
jects, such  as  giving  his  paw,  and  keeping  guard  over  a 

20  coat  or  stick  left  in  his  charge.     He  is  a  generalized  beast, 

grandson  to  the  jackal,  and  first  cousin  to  the  cur  of 

Europe  and  the  Eastern  pariah.     To  this  primitive,  or  only 

'slightly-improved  type  of  dog,  the  collie  perhaps  comes 

nearest  of  all  the  breeds  we  value;  and  when  he  is  thrown 

25  back  on  nature  he  is  "all  there,"  and  not  hindered  as  the 
pointer  and  other  varieties  are  by  more  deeply-rooted 
special  instincts.  At  all  events,  this  individual  took  very 
kindly  to  the  rude  life  and  work  of  his  new  companions, 
and  by  means  of  his  hardihood  and  inexhaustible  energy, 

30  became  their  leader  and  superior,  especially  in  hunting. 
Above  everything  he  loved  to  chase  a  fox;  and  when  in 
the  course  of  a  ride  in  the  valley  one  was  started,  he  in- 
variably threw  all  the  native  dogs  out  and  caught  and 
killed  it  himself.     If  these  dogs  had  all  together  taken  to 


394  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

a  feral  life,  I  do  not  think  the  collie  would  have  been  worse 
off  than  the  others. 

It  was  very  different  with  the  grayhounds.     There  were 
four,  all  of  pure  breed;  and  as  they  were  never  taken  out 
to  hunt,  and  could  not,  like  the  collie,  take  their  share  in  5 
the  ordinary  work  of  the  establishment,  they  were  absolute- 
ly useless,  and  certainly  not  ornamental.     When  I  first 
noticed  them  they  were  pitiable  objects,  thin  as  skeletons, 
so  lame  that  they  could  scarcely  walk,  and  wounded  and 
scratched  all  over  with  thorns.     I  was  told  that  they  had   10 
been  out  hunting  on  their  own  account  in  the  thorny  up- 
land, and  that  this  was  the  result.     For  three  or  four  days 
they  remained  inactive,  sleeping  the  whole  time,  except 
when  they  limped  to  the  kitchen  to  be  fed.     But  day  by 
day  they  improved  in  condition;  their  scratches  healed,   15 
their  ribbed  sides  grew  smooth  and  sleek,  and  they  re- 
covered from  their  lameness;  but  scarcely  had  they  got 
well  before  it  was  discovered  one  morning  that  they  had 
vanished.     They  had  gone  off  during  the  night  to  hunt 
again  on  the  uplands.     They  were  absent  two  nights  and  20 
a  day,  then  returned,  looking  even  more  reduced   and 
miserable  than  when  I  first  saw  them,  to  recover  slowly 
from  their  hurts  and  fatigue;  and  when  well  again  they 
were  off  once  more;  and  so  it  continued  during  the  whole 
time  of  my  visit.     These  hounds,  if  left  to  themselves,  25 
would  have  soon  perished. 

Another  member  of  this  somewhat  heterogeneous  canine 
community  was  a  retriever,  one  of  the  handsomest  I  have 
ever  seen,  rather  small,  and  with  a  most  perfect  head. 
The  extreme  curliness  of  his  coat  made  him  look  at  a  little  30 
distance  like  a  dog  cut  out  of  a  block  of  ebony,  with  the 
surface  carved  to  almost  symmetrical  knobbiness.  Major 
— that  was  his  name — would  have  lent  himself  well  to 
sculpture.     He  was  old,   but  not  too  fat,  nor  inactive; 


NARRATION  395 

sometimes  he  would  go  out  with  the  other  dogs,  but  ap- 
parently he  could  not  keep  up  the  pace,  as  after  a  few  hours 
he  would  return  always  alone,  looking  rather  disconsolate. 
I  have  always  been  partial  to  dogs  of  this  breed ;  not  on 
5  account  of  the  assistance  they  have  been  to  me,  but  be- 
cause when  I  have  wished  to  have  a  dog  at  my  side  I  have 
found  them  more  suitable  than  other  kinds  for  companions. 
They  are  not  stupid  nor  restless,  but  ready  to  fall  in  with  a 
quiet  mood,  and  never  irritate  by  a  perpetual  impatient 

10  craving  for  notice.  A  fussy,  demonstrative  dog,  that  can 
never  efface  himself,  I  object  to:  he  compels  your  atten- 
tion, and  puts  you  in  a  subordinate  place:  you  are  his 
attendant,  not  he  yours. 

Major's  appearance  attracted  me  from  the  first,  and  he, 

15  on  his  side,  joyfully  responded  to  my  advances,  and  at 
once  attached  himself  to  me,  following  me  about  the  place 
as  if  he  feared  to  lose  sight  of  me  even  for  a  minute.  My 
host,  however,  hastened  to  warn  me  not  to  take  him  with 
me  when  I  went  out  shooting,  as  he  was  old  and  blind,  and 

20  subject,  moreover,  to  strange  freaks,  which  made  him  worse 
than  useless.     Major  had  formerly  been  an  excellent  re- 
triever, my  host  informed  me,  but  even  in  his  best  days  not 
wholly  to  be  trusted,  and  now  he  was  nothing  but  bad. 
I  could  scarcely  credit  the  blindness,  as  he  did  not  show 

25  it  in  his  brown,  intelligent  and  wistful  eyes,  and  always 
appeared  keenly  alive  and  interested  in  everything  going 
on  about  him;  but  by  experimenting  I  found  that  he  could 
scarcely  see  further  than  about  six  inches  from  his  nose; 
but  his  hearing  and  scent  were  so  good,  and  guided  him  so 

30  well,  that  no  person  on  a  slight  acquaintance  would  have 
made  the  discovery  of  his  defective  sight. 

Of  course,  after  this,  I  could  have  nothing  more  to  do 
with  the  retriever,  further  than  patting  him  on  the  head, 
and  speaking  a  kind  word  to  him  whenever  he  chanced  to 


396  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

be  in  my  way.  But  this  was  not  enough  for  old  Major. 
He  was  a  sporting  dog,  full  of  energy,  and  with  undimin- 
ished faith  in  his  own  powers,  in  spite  of  his  years,  and 
when  a  sportsman  had  come  to  the  house,  and  had  de- 
liberately singled  him  out  for  friendly  notice,  he  could  not  5 
and  would  not  believe  that  it  was  to  go  no  further.  Day 
after  day  he  clung  to  the  delusion  that  he  was  to  accompany 
me  in  my  walks  and  little  shooting  excursions  in  the  neigh- 
borhood ;  and  every  time  I  took  down  a  gun  he  would  rush 
forward  from  his  post  by  the  door  with  so  many  demon-  ic 
strations  of  joy,  and  with  such  imploring  looks  and  ges- 
tures, that  I  found  it  very  hard  to  rebuke  him.  It  was  sad 
to  have  him  standing  there,  first  cocking  up  one  ear,  then 
the  other,  striving  to  pierce  the  baffling  mists  that  inter- 
vened between  his  poor  purblind  eyes  and  my  face,  to  find  15 
some  sign  of  relenting  in  it. 

It  was  evident  that  old  Major  was  not  happy,  in  spite  of 
all  he  had  to  make  him  so;  although  he  was  well  fed  and 
fat,  and  treated  with  the  greatest  kindness  by  every  one 
on  the  place,  and  although  all  the  other  dogs  about  the  '20 
house  looked  up  to  him  with  that  instinctive  respect  they 
always  accord  to  the  oldest,  or  strongest,  or  most  domineer- 
ing member,  his  heart  was  restless  and  dissatisfied.  He 
could  not  endure  an  inactive  life.  There  was,  in  fact, 
only  one  way  in  which  he  could  or  was  allowed  to  work  off  '25 
his  superabundant  energy.  This  was  when  we  went  down 
to  the  river  to  bathe  in  the  afternoon,  and  when  we  would 
amuse  ourselves,  some  of  us,  by  throwing  enormous  logs 
and  dead  branches  into  the  current.  They  were  large 
and  heavy,  and  thrown  well  out  into  one  of  the  m6st  rapid  30 
rivers  in  the  world,  but  Major  would  have  perished  forty 
times  over,  if  he  had  had  forty  lives  to  throw  away,  before 
he  would  have  allowed  one  of  those  useless  logs  to  be  lost. 
But  this  was  wasted  energy,  and  Major  could  not  have 


NARRATION  297 

known  it  better  if  he  had  graduated  with  honors  at  the 
Royal  School  of  Mines,  consequently  his  exertions  in  the 
river  did  not  make  him  happy.  His  unhappiness  began 
to  prey  on  my  mind,  and  I  never  left  the  house  but  that 
5  mute  imploring  face  haunted  me  for  an  hour  after,  until  I 
could  bear  it  no  longer.  Major  conquered ,  and  to  witness  his 
boundless  delight  and  gratitude  when  I  shouldered  my  gun 
and  called  him  to  me,  was  a  pleasure  worth  many  dead  birds. 
Nothing  important  happened  during  our  first  few  ex- 

10  peditions.  Major  behaved  rather  wildly,  I  thought,  but 
he  was  obedient  and  anxious  to  please,  and  my  impression 
was  that  he  had  been  too  long  neglected,  and  would  soon 
settle  down  to  do  his  share  of  the  work  in  a  sober,  business- 
like manner. 

15  Then  a  day  came  when  Major  covered  himself  with 
glory.  I  came  one  morning  on  a  small  flock  of  flamingoes 
in  a  lagoon ;  they  were  standing  in  the  water,  about  seventy- 
five  or  eighty  yards  from  the  shore,  quietly  dozing.  Fortu- 
nately^  the  lagoon  was  bordered  by  a  dense  bed  of  tall 

20  rushes,  about  fifteen  yards  in  breadth,  so  that  I  was  able  to 
approach  the  birds  unseen  by  them.  I  crept  up  to  the 
rushes  in  a  fever  of  delighted  excitement;  not  that 
flamingoes  are  not  common  in  that  district,  but  because  I 
had  noticed  that  one  of  the  birds  before  me  was  the  largest 

c:;  and  loveliest  flamingo  I  had  ever  set  eyes  on,  and  I  had 
long  been  anxious  to  secure  one  very  perfect  specimen. 
I  think  my  hand  trembled  a  great  deal;  nevertheless,  the 
bird  dropped  when  I  fired;  and  then  how  quickly  the  joy 
I  experienced  was  changed  to  despair  when  I  looked  on 

30  the  wide  expanse  of  mud,  reeds  and  water  that  separated 
him  from  me !  How  was  I  ever  to  get  him  ?  It  is  as  much 
as  a  man's  life  is  worth  to  venture  into  one  of  these  long 
river-like  lagoons  in  the  valley,  as  under  the  quiet  water 
there  is  a  bed  of  mire,  soft  as  clotted  cream,  and  deep 


398  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

enough  for  a  giant's  grave.  I  thought  of  Major,  hut  not 
for  a  moment  did  I  believe  that  he,  poor  dog!  was  equal 
to  the  task.  When  I  fired  he  dashed  hurriedly  forward, 
and  came  against  the  wall  of  close  rushes,  where  he  strug- 
gled hopelessly  for  a  little  while,  and  then  floundered  back  5 
to  me.  There  was,  however,  nothing  else  to  be  done. 
"Major,  come  here,"  I  called,  and,  taking  a  lump  of  clay 
I  threw  it  as  far  as  I  could  toward  the  floating  bird.  He 
raised  his  ears,  and  listened  to  get  the  right  direction,  and 
when  the  splash  of  the  stone  reached  us  he  dashed  in  and  10 
against  the  rushes  once  more.  After  a  violent  struggle 
he  succeeded  in  getting  through  them,  and,  finding  him- 
self in  deep  water,  struck  straight  out,  and  then  began 
swimming  about  in  all  directions,  until,  getting  to  wind- 
ward of  the  bird,  he  followed  up  the  scent  and  found  it.  15 
This  was  the  easiest  part  of  the  task,  as  the  bird  was  very 
large,  and  when  Major  got  back  to  the  rushes  with  it,  and 
I  heard  him  crashing  and  floundering  through,  snorting  and 
coughing  as  if  half -suffocated,  I  was  sure  that  if  I  ever  got 
my  flamingo  at  all  it  must  be  hopelessly  damaged.  At  20 
length  he  appeared,  so  exhausted  with  his  exertions  that  he 
could  hardly  stand,  and  deposited  the  bird  at  my  feet. 
Never  had  I  seen  such  a  splendid  specimen!  It  was  an 
old  cock  bird,  excessively  fat,  weighing  sixteen  pounds, 
yet  Major  had  brought  it  out  through  this  slough  of  des-  25 
pond  without  breaking  its  skin,  or  soiling  its  exquisitely 
beautiful  crimson,  rose-colored,  and  faintly-blushing  white 
plumage!  Had  he  not  himself  been  so  plastered  with 
mud  and  slime  I  should,  in  gratitude,  have  taken  him  into 
my  arms;  but  he  appeared  very  well  satisfied  with  the  30 
words  of  approval  I  bestowed  on  him,  and  we  started 
homeward  in  a  happy  frame  of  mind,  each  feeling  well 
pleased  with  the  other — and  himself. 

That  evening  as  I  sat  by  the  fire  greatly  enjoying  my 


NARRATION  399 

after-dinner  coffee,  and  a  pipe  of  the  strongest  cavendish,  I 
related  the  day's  adventures,  and  then  for  the  first  time 
heard  from  my  host  something  of  Major's  antecedents  and 
remarkable  history. 
5  He  was  a  Scotch  dog  by  birth,  and  had  formerly  belonged 
to  the  Earl  of  Zetland,  and  as  he  proved  to  be  an  excep- 
tionally clever  and  good-looking  young  dog,  he  was  for  a 
time  thought  much  of;  but  there  was  a  drop  of  black  blood 
in  Major's  heart,  and  in  a  moment  of  temptation  it  led 

10  him  into  courses  for  which  he  was  finally  condemned  to  an 
ignominious  death;  he  escaped  to  become  a  pioneer  of 
civilization  in  the  wilderness,  and  to  show  even  in  old  age 
and  when  his  sight  had  failed  hird,  of  what  stuff  he  was 
made.     Killing  sheep  was  his  crime;  he  had  hunted  the 

15  swift-footed  cheviots  and  black-faces  on  the  hills  and 
moors;  he  had  tasted  their  blood  and  had  made  the  dis- 
covery that  it  was  sweet,  and  the  ancient  wild  dog  instinct 
was  hot  in  his  heart.  The  new  joy  possessed  his  whole 
being,  and  in  a  moment  swept  away  every  restraint.     The 

20  savage  life  was  the  only  real  life  after  all,  and  what  cared 
Major,  about  the  greatest  happiness  for  the  greatest  num- 
ber, and  new  fangled  notions  about  the  division  of  labor, 
in  which  so  mean  a  part  was  assigned  him!  Was  he  to 
spend    a   paltry   puppy    existence    retrieving    birds,    first 

25  flushed  by  a  stupid  pointer  or  setter,  and  shot  by  a  man 
with  a  gun — the  bird,  after  all,  to  be  eaten  by  none  of  them; 
and  he,  in  return  for  his  share  in  the  work,  to  be  fed  on 
mild  messes  and  biscuits,  and  beef,  killed  somewhere  out 
of  sight  by  a  butcher?     Away  with  such  a  complex  state 

30  of  things!  He  would  not  be  stifled  by  such  an  artificial 
system;  he  would  kill  his  own  mutton  on  the  moors,  and 
eat  it  raw  and  warm  in  the  good  old  fashion,  and  enjoy 
life,  as,  doubtless,  every  dog  of  spirit  had  enjoyed  it  a 
thousand  years  ago! 


400  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

This  was  not  to  be  permitted  on  a  well-conducted 
estate;  and  as  it  was  thought  that  chains  and  slavery 
would  be  less  endurable  than  death  to  a  dog  of  Major's 
spirit,  to  death  he  was  forthwith  condemned. 

Now  it  happened  that  a  gentleman,  hearing  all  this  from  5 
the  earl's  gamekeeper,  before  the  dread  sentence  had  been 
executed,  all  at  once  remembered  that  one  of  his  friends, 
who  was  preparing  to  emigrate  to  Patagonia,  purposed 
taking  out  some  good  dogs  with  him,  and  thinking  that  this 
retriever  would  form  an  acceptable  gift,  he  begged  for  it.   10 
The  gamekeeper  gave  it  to  him,  and  he  in  turn  gave  it  to 
his  friend.     In  this  way  Major  escaped  the  penalty,  and  in 
due  time,  after  seeing  and  doubtless  reflecting  much  by 
the  way,  arrived  at  his  destination.     I  say  advisedly  that 
Major  probably  reflected  a  great  deal,  for  in  his  new  home  15 
he  never  once  gave  way  to  his  criminal  appetite  for  sheep's 
blood ;  but  whenever  the  flock  came  in  his  way,  which  was 
often  enough,  he  turned  resolutely  aside  and  skulked  off 
out  of  the  sound  of  their  bleating  as  quickly  as  possible. 

All  I  heard  from  my  host  only  served  to  raise  ray  opinion  20 
of  Major,  and,  remembering  what  he  had  accomplished 
that  day,  I  formed  the  idea  that  the  most  glorious  period 
of  his  life  had  just  dawned,  that  he  had  now  begun  a  series 
of  exploits,  compared  with  which  the  greatest  deeds  of  all 
retrievers  in  other  lands  would  sink  into  insignificance.  25 

I  have  now  to  relate  Major's  second  important  exploit, 
and  on  this  occasion  the  birds  were  geese. 

The  upland  geese  are  excellent  eating,  and  it  was  our 
custom  to  make  an  early  breakfast  off  a  cold  goose,  or  of 
any  remnants  left  in  the  larder.     Cold  boiled  goose  and  30 
coffee,  often  with  no  bread — it  sounds  strange,  but  never 
shall  I  forget  those  delicious  early  Patagonian  breakfasts. 

Now  the  geese,  although  abundant  at  that  season,  were 
excessively  wary,  and  hard  to  kill;  and  as  no  other  person 


NARRATION  401 

went  after  them,  although  all  grumbled  loudly  when  there 
was  no  goose  for  breakfast,  I  was  always  very  glad  to  get 
a  shot  at  them  when  out  with  the  gun. 

One  day  I  saw  a  great  flock  congregated  on  a  low  mud 

5  bank  in  one  of  the  lagoons,  and  immediately  began  to 
maneuver  to  get  within  shooting  distance  without  disturb- 
ing them.  Fortunately  they  were  in  a  great  state  of 
excitement,  keeping  up  a  loud  incessant  clamor,  as  if 
something  very  important  to  the  upland  geese  were  being 

10  discussed,  and  in  the  general  agitation  they  neglected  their 
safety.  More  geese  in  small  flocks  were  continually 
arriving  from  various  directions,  increasing  the  noise  and 
excitement;  and  by  dint  of  much  going  on  hands  and  knees 
and  crawling  over  rough  ground,  I  managed  to  get  within 

15  seventy  yards  of  them  and  fired  into  the  middle  of  the  flock. 
The  birds  rose  up  with  a  great  rush  of  wings  and  noise  of 
screams,  leaving  five  of  their  number  floundering  about  in 
the  shallow  water.  Major  was  quickly  after  them,  but 
two  of  the  five  were  not  badly  wounded,  and  soon  swam 

10  beyond  his  reach;  to  the  others  he  was  guided  by  the 
tremendous  flapping  they  made  in  the  water  in  their  death 
struggles;  and  one  by  one  he  conveyed  them,  not  to  his 
expectant  master,  but  to  a  small  island  about  a  hundred 
and  twenty  yards  from  the  shore.     No  sooner  had  he  got 

15  them  all  together  than,  to  my  unspeakable  astonishment 
and  dismay,  he  began  worrying  them,  growling  all  the  time 
with  a  playful  affectation  of  anger,  and  pulling  out  mouth- 
fuls  of  feathers  which  he  scattered  in  clouds  over  his  head. 
To  my  shouts  he  responded  by  wagging  his  tail,  and  bark- 

JO  ing  a  merry  crisp  little  bark,  then  flying  at  the  dead  birds 
again.  He  seemed  to  be  telling  me,  plainly  as  if  he  had  used 
words,  that  he  heard  me  well  enough,  but  was  not  disposed 
to  obey,  that  he  found  it  very  amusing  playing  with  the 
geese  and  intended  to  enjoy  himself  to  his  heart's  content. 


40^  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"Major!  Major!"  I  cried,  "you  base  ungrateful  dog! 
Is  this  the  way  you  repay  me  for  all  my  kindness,  for  be- 
friending you  when  others  spoke  evil  of  you,  and  made 
you  keep  at  home,  and  treated  you  with  contemptuous 
neglect!  Oh,  you  wretched  brute,  how  many  glorious  5 
breakfasts  are  you  spoiling  with  those  villainous  teeth!" 

In  vain  I  stormed  and  threatened,  and  told  him  that  I 
would  never  speak  to  him  again,  that  I  would  thrash  him, 
that  I  had  seen  dogs  shot  for  less  than  what  he  was  doing. 
I  screamed  his  name  until  I  was  hoarse,  but  it  was  all  use-   li 
less.     Major  cared  nothing  for  my  shouts,  and  went  on 
worrying  the  geese.     At  length,  when  he  grew  tired  of  his 
play,  he  coolly  jumped  into  the  water  and  swam  back  to 
me,  leaving  the  geese  behind.     I  waited  for  him,  a  stick 
in  my  hand,  burning  for  vengeance,  and  fully  intending  to   1. 
collar  and  thrash  him  well  the  moment  he  reached  me. 
Fortunately  he  had  a  long  distance  to  swim,  and  before  he 
reached  land  I  began  to  reflect  that  if  I  received  him  rough- 
ly, with  blows,  I  would  never  get  the  geese — those  three 
magnificent  white  and  maroon-colored  geese  that  had  cost  2* 
me  so  much  labor  to  kill.     Yes,  I  thought,  it  will  be  better 
to  dissemble  and  be  diplomatic  and  receive  him  graciously, 
and  then  perhaps  he  will  be  persuaded  to  go  again  and 
fetch  the  geese.     In  the  midst  of  these  plans  Major  arrived, 
and  sat  down  facing  me  without  shaking  himself,  evidently   2, 
beginning  to  experience  some  qualms  of  conscience. 

"Major,"  said  I,  addressing  him  in  a  mild,  gentle  voice, 
and  patting  his  wet  black  head,  "you  have  treated  me  very 
badly,  but  I  am  not  going  to  punish  you — I  am  going  to 
give  you  another  chance,  old  dog.  Now,  Major,  good  and  3( 
obedient  dog,  go  and  fetch  me  the  geese."  With  that  I 
pushed  him  gently  toward  the  water.  Major  understood 
me,  and  went  in,  although  in  a  somewhat  perfimctory 
manner,  and  swam  back  to  the  island.     On  reaching  it 


NARRATION  403 

he  went  up  to  the  geese,  examined  them  briefly  with  his 
nose  and  sat  down  to  deUberate.  I  called  him,  but  he  paid 
no  attention.  With  what  intense  anxiety  I  waited  his 
decision ! 
5  At  last  he  appeared  to  have  made  up  his  mind;  he  stood 
up,  shook  himself  briskly  and — will  it  be  believed  ? — began 
to  worry  the  geese  again !  He  was  not  merely  playing  with 
them  now,  and  did  not  scatter  the  feathers  about  and  bark, 
but  bit  and  tore  them  in  a  truculent  mood.     When  he  had 

10  torn  them  pretty  well  to  pieces  he  swam  back  once  more, 
but  this  time  he  came  to  land  at  a  long  distance  from  me, 
knowing,  I  suppose,  that  I  was  now  past  speaking  mildly 
to  him;  and,  skulking  through  the  reeds,  he  sneaked  home 
by  himself.     Later,  when  I  arrived  at  the  house,  he  care- 

15  fully  kept  out  of  my  way. 

I  believe  that  when  he  went  after  the  geese  the  second 
time  he  really  did  mean  to  bring  them  out,  but  finding  them 
so  much  mutilated  he  thought  that  he  had  already  hope- 
lessly offended  me,  and  so  concluded  to  save  himself  the 

CO  labor  of  carrying  them.  He  did  not  know,  poor  brute,  that 
his  fetching  them  would  have  been  taken  as  a  token  of 
repentance,  and  that  he  would  have  been  forgiven.  But 
it  was  impossible  to  forgive  him  now.  All  faith  in  him  was 
utterly  and  for  ever  gone,  and  from  that  day  I  looked  on 

£3  him  as  a  poor  degraded  creature.  If  I  ever  bestowed  a 
caress  on  his  upturned  face,  I  did  it  in  the  spirit  of  a  man 
who  flings  a  copper  to  an  unfortunate  beggar  in  the  street; 
and  it  was  a  satisfaction  to  me  that  Major  appeared  to 
know  what  I  thought  of  him. 

30  But  all  this  happened  years  ago,  and  now  I  can  but  look 
back  with  kindly  feelings  for  the  old  blind  retriever  who  re- 
trieved my  geese  so  badly.  I  can  even  laugh  at  myself  for 
having  allowed  an  ineradicable  anthropomorphism  to  carry 
me  so  far  in  recalling  and  describing  our  joint  adventures. 


404  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

But  such  a  fault  is  almost  excusable  in  this  instance, 
for  he  was  really  a  remarkable  dog  among  other  dogs,  like  a 
talented  man  among  his  fellow-men.  I  doubt  if  any  other 
retriever,  in  such  circumstances  and  handicapped  by  such 
an  infirmity,  could  have  retrieved  that  splendid  flamingo; 
but  with  this  excellence  there  was  the  innate  capacity  to  go 
wrong,  a  sudden  reversion  to  the  irresponsible  wild  dog — 
the  devilry,  to  keep  to  human  terms,  that  sent  him  into 
exile  and  made  him  at  the  last  so  interesting  and  pathetic  a 
figure. 

Suggestions:  This  narrative  achieves  great  vividness  along 
with  great  simplicity.  These  qualities,  together  with  an  unusually 
sympathetic  treatment,  give  the  narrative  its  charm. 

What  does  Mr.  Hudson  mean  by  his  own  "ineradicable  an- 
thropomorphism" in  narrating  the  story  of  Major?  Does  he 
really  fail,   at  any  point,   to  convince  his  reader.'^ 

Decide  whether  you  will  tell  your  own  story  in  the  first  or  in 
the  third  person.  What,  in  this  case,  are  the  disadvantages 
of  each  point  of  view  ? 

ADAPTED  SUBJECTS* 

The  Dog  I  Knew  Best.  A  Rabbit  and  His  Master. 

The  Battle  of  the  Ants.  Rescuing  Six  Kittens. 

A  Horse's  Intelligence.  How  We  Swarmed  the 

The  Tragedy  of  a  Bird's  Nest. 


THE  CAPTURE  OF  A  TROUTt 

R.  D.  Blackmore 

TiriLARY  followed  a  path  through  the  meadows,  with 
-■-J-  the  calm  bright  sunset  casting  his  shadow  over  the 
shorn  grass,  or  up  in  the  hedge-road,  or  on  the  brown 
banks  where  the  drought  had  struck.     On  his  back  he 

♦To  be  extended,  of  course,  by  suggestions  from  individual  students. 
fFrom  Alice  Lorraine. 


NARRATION  405 

carried  a  fishing-basket,  containing  his  bits  of  refreshment; 
and  in  his  right  hand  a  short  springy  rod,  the  absent 
sailor's  favorite.  After  long  council  with  Mabel,  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  walk  up  stream,  as  far  as  the  spot 

5  where  two  brooks  met,  and  formed  body  enough  for  a  fly 
flipped  in  very  carefully  to  sail  downward.  Here  he  began, 
and  the  creak  of  his  reel  and  the  swish  of  his  rod  were  music 
to  him,  after  the  whirl  of  London  life. 

The  brook  was  as  bright  as  the  best  cut-glass,  and  the 

10  twinkles  of  its  shifting  facets  only  made  it  seem  more  clear. 
It  twisted  about  a  little,  here  and  there;  and  the  brink  was 
fringed  now  and  then  with  something,  a  clump  of  loose- 
strife, a  tuft  of  avens,  or  a  bed  of  flowering  water-cress,  or 
any  other  of  the  many  plants  that  wash  and  look  into  the 

15  water.     But  the  trout,  the  main  object  in  view,  were  most 

■  objectionably  too  much  in  view.     They  scudded  up  the 

brook  at  the  shadow  of  a  hair,  or  even  the  tremble  of  a 

blade  of  grass ;  and  no  pacific  assurance  could  make  them 

even  stop  to  be  reasoned  with.     "This  won't  do,"  said 

20  Hilary,  who  very  often  talked  to  himself,  in  lack  of  a 
better  comrade;  "I  call  this  very  hard  upon  me.  The 
beggars  won't  rise  till  it  is  quite  dark.  I  must  have  the 
interdict  off  my  tobacco,  if  this  sort  of  thing  is  to  go  on. 
How  I  should  enjoy  a  pipe  just  now !     I  may  just  as  well 

25  sit  on  a  gate  and  think.  No,  hang  it,  I  hate  thinking  now. 
There  are  troubles  hanging  over  me,  as  sure  as  the  tail  of 
that  comet  grows.  How  I  detest  that  comet !  No  wonder 
the  fish  won't  rise.  But  if  I  have  to  strip  and  tickle  them 
in  the  dark,  I  won't  go  back  without  some  for  her. " 

30       He  was  lucky  enough  to  escape  the  weight  of  such  horri- 
ble poaching  upon  his  conscience;  for  suddenly  to  his  ears 
was  borne  the  most  melodious  of  all  sounds,  the  flop  of  a 
heavy  fish  sweetly  jumping  after  some  excellent  fly  or  grub. 
"Ha,  my  friend!"  cried  Hilary,  "so  you  are  up  for  your 


400  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

supper,  are  you  ?  I  myself  will  awake  right  early.  Still 
I  behold  the  ring  you  made.  If  my  right  hand  forget  not 
its  cunning,  you  shall  form  your  next  ring  in  the  frying-pan. 

He  gave  that  fish  a  little  time  to  think  of  the  beauty  of 
that  mouthful,  and  get  ready  for  another;  the  while  he  5 
was  putting  a  white  moth  on,  in  lieu  of  his  blue  upright. 
He  kept  the  grizzled  palmer  still  for  tail-fly,  and  he  tried 
his  knots,  for  he  knew  that  this  trout  was  a  Triton. 

Then,  with  a  delicate  sidling  and  stooping,  known  only 
to  them  that  fish  for  trout  in  very  bright  water  of  the  10 
summer-time — compared  with  which  art  the  coarse  work 
of  the  salmon-fisher  is  as  that  of  a  scene-painter  to  Mr. 
Holman  Hunt's — with,  or  in,  and  by  a  careful  manner,  not 
to  be  described  to  those  who  have  never  studied  it,  Hilary 
won  access  to  the  water,  without  any  doubt  in  the  mind  of  15 
the  fish  concerning  the  prudence  of  appetite.     Then  he " 
flipped  his  short  collar  in,  not  with  a  cast,  but  a  spring  of 
the  rod,  and  let  his  flies  go  quietly  down  a  sharpish  run 
into  that  good  trout's  hole.     The  worthy  trout  looked  at 
them  both,  and  thought;  for  he  had  his  own  favorite  spot  20 
for  watching  the  world  go  by,  as  the  rest  of  us  have.     So 
he  let  the  grizzled  palmer  pass,  within  an  inch  of  his  upper 
lip ;  for  it  struck  him  that  the  tail  turned  up  in  a  manner  not 
wholly  natural,  or  at  any  rate  unwholesome.     He  looked 
at  the  white  moth  also,  and  thought  that  he  had  never  25 
seen  one  at  all  like  it.     So  he  went  down  under  his  root 
again,  hugging  himself  upon  his  wisdom,  never  moving  a 
fin,  but  oaring  and  helming  his  plump,  spotted  sides  with 
his  tail. 

"Upon  my  word,  it  is  too  bad!"  said  Hilary,  after  three  30 
beautiful  throws,  and  exquisite  management  down  stream: 
"everything  Kentish  beats  me  hollow.     Now,  if  that  had 
been  one  of  our  trout,  I  would  have  laid  my  life  upon 
catching  him.     One  more  throw,  however.     How  would 


NARRATION  407 

« 
it  be  if  I  sunk  my  flies?     That  fellow  is  worth  some 
patience. " 

While  he  was  speaking,  his  flies  alit  on  the  glassy  ripple, 
like  gnats  in  their  love-dance;  and  then  by  a  turn  of  the 
5  wrist,  he  played  them  just  below  the  surface,  and  let  them 
go  gliding  down  the  stickle,  into  the  shelfy  nook  of  shadow, 
where  the  big  trout  hovered.  Under  the  surface,  floating 
thus,  with  the  check  of  ductile  influence,  the  two  flies 
spread  their  wings  and  quivered,  like  a  centiplume  moth  in 

10  a  spider's  web.  Still  the  old  trout,  calmly  oaring,  looked 
at  them  both  suspiciously.  Why  should  the  same  flies 
come  so  often,  and  why  should  they  have  such  crooked 
tails,  and  could  he  be  sure  that  he  did  not  spy  the  shadow  of 
a  human  hat  about  twelve  yards  up  the  water  ?     Revolving 

15  these  things  he  might  have  lived  to  a  venerable  age — but 
for  that  noble  ambition  to  teach,  which  is  fatal  to  even  the 
wisest.  A  young  fish,  an  insolent  whipper-snapper,  jumped 
in  his  babyish  way  at  the  palmer,  and  missed  it  through  over- 
eagerness.    '*  I'll  show  you  the  way  to  catch  a  fly, "  said  the 

20  big  trout  to  him;  *'open  your  mouth  like  this,   my  son." 

With  that  he  bolted  the  palmer,  and  threw  up  his  tail, 

and  turned  to  go  home  again.     Alas!  his  sweet  home  now 

shall  know  him  no  more.     For  suddenly  he  was  surprised 

by  a  most  disagreeable  sense  of  grittiness,  and  then  a  keen 

25  stab  in  the  roof  of  his  mouth.  He  jumped,  in  his  wrath,  a 
foot  out  of  the  water,  and  then  heavily  plunged  to  the 
depths  of  his  hole. 

"You've  got  it,  my  friend,"  cried  Hilary,  in  a  tingle  of 
fine  emotions;  "I  hope  the  sailor's  knots  are  tied  with 

30  professional  skill  and  care.  You  are  a  big  one,  and  a 
clever  one  too.  It  is  much  if  I  ever  land  you.  No  net,  or 
gaff,  or  anything.  I  only  hope  that  there  are  no  stakes 
here.     Ah,  there  you  go!     Now  comes  the  tug." 

Away  went  the  big  trout  down  the  stream,  at  a  pace 


408  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

very  hard  to  exaggerate,  and  after  him  rushed  Hilary, 
knowing  that  his  line  was  rather  short,  and  that  if  it  ran 
out,  all  was  over.  Keeping  his  eyes  on  the  water  only, 
and  the  headlong  speed  of  the  fugitive,  headlong  over  a 
stake  he  fell,  and  took  a  deep  wound  from  another  stake.  5 
Scarcely  feeling  it,  up  he  jumped,  lifting  his  rod,  which  had 
fallen  flat,  and  fearing  to  find  no  strain  on  it.  "Aha,  he  is 
not  gone  yet ! "  he  cried,  as  the  rod  bowed  like  a  springlebow. 

He  was  now  a  good  hundred  yards  down  the  brook  from 
the  corner  where  the  fight  began.  Through  his  swiftness  10 
of  foot,  and  good  management,  the  fish  had  never  been 
able  to  tighten  the  line  beyond  yield  of  endurance.  The 
bank  had  been  free  from  bushes,  or  haply  no  skill  could 
have  saved  him;  but  now  they  were  come  to  a  corner  where 
a  nut-bush  quite  overhung  the  stream.  15 

"I  am  done  for  now,'*  said  the  fisherman;  "the  villain 
knows  too  well  what  he  is  about.  Here  ends  this  adventure. " 

Full  though  he  was  of  despair,  he  jumped  anyhow  into 
the  water,  kept  the  point  of  his  rod  close  down,  reeled  up  a 
little,  as  the  fish  felt  weaker,  and  just  cleared  the  drop  of  the  20 
hazel  boughs.  The  water  flapped  into  the  pockets  of  his  coat, 
and  he  sawjed  streaks  flow  downward .  And  then  he  plunged 
out  to  an  open  reach  of  shallow  water  and  gravel  slope. 

"I  ought  to  have  you  now,"  he  said;  "though  nobody 
knows  what  a  rogue  you  are;  and  a  pretty  dance  you  have  25 
led  me!" 

Doubting  the  strength  of  his  tackle  to  lift  even  the  dead 
weight  of  the  fish,  and  much  more  to  meet  his  despairing 
rally,  he  happily  saw  a  little  shallow  gut,  or  backwater, 
where  a  small  spring  ran  out.  Into  this  by  a  dexterous  30 
turn  he  rather  led  than  pulled  the  fish,  who  was  ready  to 
rest  for  a  minute  or  two;  then  he  stuck  his  rod  into  the 
bank,  ran  down  stream,  and  with  his  hat  in  both  hands 
appeared  at  the  only  exit  from  the  gut.     It  was  all  up  now 


NARRATION  409 

with  the  monarch  of  the  brook.  As  he  skipped  and 
jumped,  with  his  rich  yellow  belly,  and  chaste  silver  sides, 
in  the  green  of  the  grass,  joy  and  glory  of  the  highest  merit, 
and  gratitude,  glowed  in  the  heart  of  Lorraine.  "Two 
5  and  three-quarters  you  must  weigh.  And  at  your  very 
best  you  are !  How  small  your  head  is !  And  how  bright 
your  spots  are!"  he  cried,  as  he  gave  him  the  stroke  of 
grace.  "You  really  have  been  a  brave  and  fine  fellow.  I 
hope  they  will  know  how  to  fry  you." 
10  While  he  cut  his  fly  out  of  this  grand  trout's  mouth,  he 
felt  for  the  first  time  a  pain  in  his  knee,  where  the  point  of 
the  stake  had  entered  it.  Under  the  buckle  of  his  breeches 
blood  was  soaking  away  inside  his  gaiters;  and  then  he 
saw  how  he  had  dyed  the  water. 

Suggestions:  Read  this  narrative  through  carefully  and  then 
state  your  first  general  impression.  Is  the  narrative  lifelike.^ 
Is  it  sufficiently  exciting  ?  From  whose  point  of  view  is  the 
capture  narrated?  Does  the  point  of  view  shift  at  any 
stage  ?     What  of  the  ending, — skill,  emphasis,  etc.  ? 

Try  to  characterize  Blackmore's  vocabulary.  Do  you  find 
many  words  used  in  unfamiliar  senses.^  How  specific  are  the 
words  as  compared  with,  say,  Stevenson's?  What  do  you 
consider  the  most  effective  portion  of  the  narrative  ? 

ADAPTED    SUBJECT 

Narrate  an  experience  of  your  own  in  hunting,  fishing,  or 
trapping. 

FAME'S  LITTLE  DAY* 

Sarah  Orne  Jewett 

15  IVrOBODY  ever  knew,  except  himself,  what  made  a 

^^      foolish  young  newspaper  reporter,  who  happened 

into  a  small  old-fashioned  hotel  in  New  York,  observe 

♦From  the  Life  of  Nancy,  Boston,  1895.  Copyright,  1895,  by  Hough- 
ton, Mifflin,  &  Co. 


410  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Mr.  Abel  Pinkham  with  deep  interest,  listen  to  his  talk, 
ask  a  question  or  two  of  the  clerk,  and  then  go  away  and 
make  up  an  effective  personal  paragraph  for  one  of  the 
morning  papers.  He  must  have  had  a  heart  full  of  fun, 
this  young  reporter,  and  something  honestly  rustic  and  5 
pleasing  must  have  struck  him  in  the  guest's  demeanor,  for 
there  was  a  flavor  in  the  few  lines  he  wrote  that  made  some 
of  his  fellows  seize  upon  the  little  paragraph,  and  copy  it, 
and  add  to  it,  and  keep  it  moving.  Nobody  knows  what 
starts  such  a  thing  in  journalism,  or  keeps  it  alive  after  it  is  lo 
started,  but  on  a  certain  Thursday  morning  the  fact  was 
made  known  to  the  world  that  among  the  notabilities  then 
in  the  city,  Abel  Pinkham,  Esquire,  a  distinguished  citizen 
of  Wetherford,  Vermont,  was  visiting  New  York  on  im- 
portant affairs  connected  with  the  maple-sugar  industry  15 
of  his  native  State.  Mr.  Pinkham  had  expected  to  keep 
his  visit  unannounced,  but  it  was  likely  to  occasion  much 
interest  in  business  and  civic  circles.  This  was  something 
like  the  way  that  the  paragraph  started ;  but  here  and  there 
a  kindred  spirit  of  the  original  journalist  caught  it  up  and  20 
added  discreet  lines  about  Mr.  Pinkham's  probable  stay  in 
town,  his  occupation  of  an  apartment  on  the  fourth  floor 
of  the  Ethan  Allen  Hotel,  and  other  circumstances  so 
uninteresting  to  the  reading  public  in  general  that  presently 
in  the  next  evening  edition,  one  city  editor  after  another  ^ 
threw  out  the  item,  and  the  young  journalists,  having  had 
their  day  of  pleasure,  passed  on  to  other  things. 

Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pinkham  had  set  forth  from  home  with 
many  forebodings,  in  spite  of  having  talked  all  winter  about 
taking  this  journey  as  soon  as  the  spring  opened.  They  30 
would  have  caught  at  any  reasonable  excuse  for  giving  it  up 
altogether,  because  when  the  time  arrived  it  seemed  so 
much  easier  to  stay  at  home.  Mrs.  Abel  Pinkham  had 
never  seen  New  York;  her  husband  himself  had  not  been 


NARRATION  411 

to  the  city  for  a  great  many  years;  in  fact,  his  reminis- 
cences of  the  former  visit  were  not  altogether  pleasant,  since 
he  had  foolishly  fallen  into  many  snares,  and  been  much 
gulled    in   his   character   of   honest   young   countryman. 

5  There  was  a  tarnished  and  worthless  counterfeit  of  a  large 
gold  watch  still  concealed  between  the  outer  boarding  and 
the  inner  lath  and  plaster  of  the  lean-to  bedroom  which 
Mr.  Abel  Pinkham  had  occupied  as  a  bachelor;  it  was 
not  the  only  witness  of  his  being  taken  in  by  city  sharpers, 

10  and  he  had  winced  ever  since  at  the  thought  of  their  wiles. 
But  he  was  now  a  man  of  sixty,  well-to-do,  and  of  authority 
in  town  affairs;  his  children  were  all  well  married  and 
settled  in  homes  of  their  own,  except  a  widowed  daughter, 
who  lived  at  home  with  her  young  son,  and  was  her  mother's 

15  lieutenant  in  household  affairs. 

The  boy  was  almost  grown,  and  at  this  season,  when 
the  maple-sugar  was  all  made  and  shipped,  and  it  was  still 
too  early  for  spring  work  on  the  land,  Mr.  Pinkham  could 
leave  home  as  well  as  not,  and  here  he  was  in  New  York, 

20  feeling  himself  to  be  a  stranger  and  foreigner  to  city  ways. 
If  it  had  not  been  for  that  desire  to  appear  well  in  his 
wife's  eyes,  which  had  buoyed  him  over  the  bar  of  many 
difficulties,  he  could  have  found  it  in  his  heart  to  take  the 
next  train  back  to  Wetherford,  Vermont,  to  be  there  rid  of 

25  his  best  clothes  and  the  stiff  rim  of  his  heavy  felt  hat.  He 
could  not  let  his  wife  discover  that  the  noise  and  con- 
fusion of  Broadway  had  the  least  power  to  make  him 
flinch:  he  cared  no  more  for  it  than  for  the  woods  in 
snow-time.     He  was  as  good  as  anybody,  and  she  was 

30  better.  They  owed  nobody  a  cent;  and  they  had  come 
on  purpose  to  see  the  city  of  New  York. 

They  were  sitting  at  the  breakfast  table  in  the  Ethan 
Allen  Hotel,  having  arrived  at  nightfall  the  day  before. 
Mrs.  Pinkham  looked  a  little  pale  about  the  mouth.     She 


412  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

had  been  kept  awake  nearly  all  night  by  the  noise,  and  had 
enjoyed  but  little  the  evening  she  had  spent  in  the  stuflFy 
parlor  of  the  hotel,  looking  down  out  of  the  window  at  what 
seemed  to  her  but  garish  scenes,  and  keeping  a  reproachful 
and  suspicious  eye  upon  some  unpleasantly  noisy  young  5 
women  of  forward  behavior  who  were  her  only  compan- 
ions. Abel  himself  was  by  no  means  so  poorly  entertained 
in  the  hotel  office  and  smoking-room.  He  felt  much  more 
at  home  than  she  did,  being  better  used  to  meeting  strange 
men  than  she  was  to  strange  women,  and  he  found  two  or  IC 
three  companions  who  had  seen  more  than  he  of  New 
York  life.  It  was  there,  indeed,  that  the  young  reporter 
found  him,  hearty  and  country-fed,  and  loved  the  appear- 
ance of  his  best  clothes,  and  the  way  Mr.  Abel  Pinkham 
brushed  his  hair,  and  loved  the  way  that  he  spoke  in  a  loud  15 
and  manful  voice  the  beliefs  and  experience  of  his  honest 
heart. 

In  the  morning  at  breakfast  time  the  Pinkhams  were 
depressed.  They  missed  their  good  bed  at  home;  they 
were  troubled  by  the  roar  and  noise  of  the  streets  that  20 
hardly  stopped  over  night  before  it  began  again  in  the 
morning.  The  waiter  did  not  put  what  mind  he  may  have 
had  to  the  business  of  serving  them;  and  Mrs.  Abel 
Pinkham,  whose  cooking  was  the  triumph  of  parish  festi- 
vals at  home,  had  her  own  opinion  about  the  beefsteak.  25 
She  was  a  woman  of  imagination,  and  now  that  she  was 
fairly  here,  spectacles  and  all,  it  really  pained  her  to  find 
that  the  New  York  of  her  dreams,  the  metropolis  of  dignity 
and  distinction,  of  wealth  and  elegance,  did  not  seem  to 
exist.  These  poor  streets,  these  unlovely  people,  were  the  30 
end  of  a  great  illusion.  They  did  not  like  to  meet  each 
other's  eyes,  this  worthy  pair.  The  man  began  to  put  on 
an  unbecoming  air  of  assertion,  and  Mrs.  Pinkham*s  face 
was  full  of  lofty  protest. 


NARRATION  413 

"My  gracious  me,  Mary  Ann!  I  am  glad  I  happened 
to  get  the  Tribune  this  mornin',"  said  Mr.  Pinkham,  with 
sudden  excitement.  "  Just  you  look  here !  I'd  like  well  to 
know  how  they  found  out  about  our  comin' ! "  and  he  hand- 

5  ed  the  paper  to  his  wife  across  the  table." There — there  'tis; 
right  by  my  thumb,"  he  insisted.  "Can't  you  see  it.?" 
and  he  smiled  like  a  boy  as  she  finally  brought  her  large 
spectacles  to  bear  upon  the  important  paragraph. 

"I  guess  they  think  somethin'  of  us,  if  you  don't  think 

10  much  o'  them,"  continued  Mr.  Pinkham,  grandly,  "oh, 
they  know  how  to  keep  the  run  o'  folks  who  are  somebody 
to  home!  Draper  and  Fitch  knew  we  was  comin'  this 
week:  you  know  I  sent  word  I  was  comin'  to  settle  with 
them  myself.     I  suppose  they  send  folks  around  to  the 

15  hotels,  these  newspapers,  but  I  shouldn't  thought  there'd 
been  time.  Anyway,  they've  thought  't  was  worth  while 
to  put  us  in!" 

Mrs.  Pinkham  did  not  take  the  trouble  to  make  a 
mystery  out  of  the  unexpected  pleasure.     "I  want  to  cut 

20  it  out  an'  send  it  right  up  home  to  daughter  Sarah,"  she 
said,  beaming  with  pride,  and  looking  at  the  printed 
names  as  if  they  were  flattering  photographs.  "I  think  't 
was  most  too  strong  to  say  we  was  among  the  notables. 
But  there!  'tis  their  business  to  dress  up  things,  and  they 

25  have  to  print  somethin'  every  day.  I  guess  I  shall  go  up 
and  put  on  my  best  dress,"  she  added,  inconsequently ; 
"this  one's  kind  of  dusty;  it's  the  same  I  rode  in." 

"Le'  me  see  that  paper  again,"  said  Mr.  Pinkham 
jealously.     "I  didn't  more'n  half  sense  it,  I  was  so  taken 

30  aback.  Well,  Mary  Ann,  you  didn't  expect  you  was  goin' 
to  get  into  the  papers  when  you  came  away.  ^ Ahel 
Pinkham,  Esquire,  of  Wetherford,  Vermont.'  It  looks 
well,  don't  it.?  But  you  might  have  knocked  me  down 
with  a  feather  when  I  first  caught  sight  of  them  words." 


414  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"I  guess  I  shall  put  on  my  other  dress,"  said  Mrs. 
Pinkham,  rising,  with  quite  a  different  air  from  that  with 
which  she  had  sat  down  to  her  morning  meal.  "This 
one  looks  a  little  out  o'  style,  as  Sarah  said,  but  when  I 
got  up  this  mornin'  I  was  so  homesick  that  it  didn*t  seem  5 
to  make  any  kind  o'  difference.  I  expect  that  saucy  girl 
last  night  took  us  to  be  nobodies.  I'd  like  to  leave  the 
paper  round  where  she  couldn't  help  seein'  it." 

"Don't  take  any  notice  of  her,"  said  Abel,  in  a  dignified 
tone.  "If  she  can't  do  what  you  want  an'  be  civil,  we'll  lO 
go  somewheres  else.  I  wish  I'd  done  what  we  talked  of  at 
first  an'  gone  to  the  Astor  House,  but  that  young  man  in 
the  cars  told  me  't  was  remote  from  the  things  we  should 
want  to  see.  The  Astor  House  was  the  top  o'  everything 
when  I  was  here  last,  but  I  expected  to  find  some  changes.  15 
I  want  you  to  have  the  best  there  is,"  he  said,  smiling  at 
his  wife  as  if  they  were  just  making  their  wedding  journey. 
"Come,  let's  be  stirrin';  'tis  long  past  eight  o'clock," 
and  he  ushered  her  to  the  door,  newspaper  in  hand. 

Later  that  day  the  guests  walked  up  Broadway,  holding  20 
themselves  erect,  and  feeling  as  if  every  eye  was  upon 
them.     Abel  Pinkham  had  settled  with  his  correspondents 
for  the  spring  consignments  of  maple-sugar,  and  a  round 
sum  in  bank-bills  was  stowed  away  in  his  vest  pocket. 
One  of  the  partners  had  been  a  Wetherford  boy,  so  when  25 
there  came  a  renewal  of  interest  in  mapl^-sugar,  and  the 
best  confectioners  were  ready  to  do  it  honor,  the  finest 
quality  being  at  a  large  premium,  this  partner  remembered 
that  there  never  was  any  sugar  made  in  Wetherford  of  such 
melting  and  delicious  flavor  as  from  the  trees  on  the  old   30 
Pinkham  farm.     He  had  now  made  a  good  bit  of  money 
for  himself  on  this  private  venture,  and  was  ready  that 
morning  to  pay  Mr.  Abel  Pinkham  cash  down,  and  to 


NARRATION  .  415 

give  him  a  handsome  order  for  the  next  season  for  all  he 
could  make.  Mr.  Fitch  was  also  generous  in  the  matter 
of  such  details  as  freight  and  packing;  he  was  immensely 
polite  and  kind  to  his  old  friends,  and  begged  them  to 
5  come  out  and  stay  with  him  and  his  wife,  where  they  lived 
now,  in  a  not  far  distant  New  Jersey  town. 

"No,  no,  sir,"  said  Mr.  Pinkham  promptly.  "My 
wife  has  come  to  see  the  city,  and  our  time  is  short.  Your 
folks  will  be  up  this  summer,  won't  they  ?     We'll  wait  and 

10  visit  them." 

"You  must  certainly  take  Mrs.  Pinkham  up  to  the 
Park,"  said  the  commission  merchant.  "I  wish  I  had 
time  to  show  you  round  myself.  I  suppose  you've  been 
seeing  some  things  already,  haven't  you  ?     I  noticed  your 

15  arrival  in  the  Herald.'^ 

"The  Tribune  it  was,"  said  Mr.  Pinkham,  blushing 
through  a  smile  and  looking  round  at  his  wife. 

"Oh  no;  I  never  read  the  Tribune^''  said  Mr.  Fitch. 
"There  was  quite  an  extended  notice  in  my  paper.     They 

20  must  have  put  you  and  Mrs.  Pinkham  into  the  Herald  too. " 
And  so  the  friends  parted  laughing.  "  T  am  much  pleased 
to  have  a  call  from  such  distinguished  parties,"  said  Mr. 
Fitch,  by  way  of  final  farewell,  and  Mr.  Pinkham  waved 
his  hand  grandly  in  reply. 

25  "Let's  get  the  Herald,  then,"  he  said,  as  they  started 
up  the  street.  "We  can  go  an'  sit  over  in  that  little  square 
that  we  passed  as  we  came  along,  and  rest  an'  talk  things 
over  about  what  we'd  better  do  this  afternoon.  I'm  tired 
out   a-trampin'   and   standin'.     I'd   rather  have  set  still 

30  while  we  were  there,  but  he  wanted  us  to  see  his  store. 
Done  very  well,  Joe  Fitch  has,  but  'taint  a  business  I 
should  like." 

There  was  a  lofty  look  and  sense  of  behavior  about  Mr. 
Pinkham  of  Wethei-ford.     You  might  have  thought  him  a 


416  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

great  politician  as  he  marched  up  Broadway,  looking 
neither  to  right  hand  nor  left.  He  felt  himself  to  be  a 
person  of  great  responsibilities. 

"I  begin  to  feel  sort  of  at  home  myself,"  said  his  wife, 
who  always  had  a  certain  touch  of  simple  dignity  about  5 
her.     "When  we  was  corain'  yesterday  New  York  seemed 
to  be  all  strange,  and  there  wasn't  nobody  expectin'  us. 
I  feel  now  just  as  if  I'd  been  here  before. " 

They  were  now  on  the  edge  of  the  better  looking  part 
of  the  town;  it  was  still  noisy  and  crowded,  but  noisy  with  10 
fine  carriages  instead  of  drays,  and  crowded  with  well- 
dressed  people.  The  hours  for  shopping  and  visiting  were 
beginning,  and  more  than  one  person  looked  with  ap- 
preciative and  friendly  eyes  at  the  comfortable,  pleased- 
looking  elderly  man  and  woman  who  went  their  easily  15 
beguiled  and  loitering  way.  The  pavement  peddlers  de- 
tained them,  but  the  cabmen  beckoned  them  in  vain; 
their  eyes  were  busy  with  the  immediate  foreground. 
Mrs.  Pinkham  was  embarrassed  by  the  recurring  reflection 
of  herself  in  the  great  windows.  20 

"  I  wish  I  had  seen  about  a  new  bonnet  before  we  came, " 
she  lamented.  "They  seem  to  be  havin'  on  some  o'  their 
spring  things." 

"Don't  you  worry,  Mary  Ann.     I  don't  see  anybody 
that  looks  any  better  than  you  do, "  said  Abel,  with  boyish  25 
and  reassuring  pride. 

Mr.  Pinkham  had  now  bought  the  Herald  and  also  the 
Suriy  well  recommended  by  an  able  newsboy,  and  presently 
they  crossed  over  from  that  corner  by  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Hotel  which  seems  like  the  heart  of  New  York,  and  found  30 
a  place  to  sit  down  on  the  S(juare, — an  empty  bench,  where 
they  could  sit  side  by  side  and  look  the  papers  through, 
reading  over  each  other's  shoulder,  and  being  impatient 
from  page  to  page.     The  paragraph  was  indeed  repeated, 


NARRATION  417 

with  trifling  additions.  Ederton  of  the  Sun  had  followed 
the  Tribune  man's  lead,  and  fabricated  a  brief  interview, 
a  marvel  of  art  and  discretion,  but  so  general  in  its  allusions 
that  it  could  create  no  suspicion;  it  almost  deceived  Mr. 
5  Pinkham  himself,  so  that  he  found  unaffected  pleasure 
in  the  fictitious  occasion,  and  felt  as  if  he  had  easily  covered 
himself  with  glory.  Except  for  the  bare  fact  of  the  inter- 
view's being  imaginary,  there  was  no  discredit  to  be  cast 
upon  Mr.  Abel  Pinkham's  having  said  that  he  thought  the 

10  country  near  Wetherford  looked  well  for  the  time  of  year, 
and  promised  a  fair  hay  crop,  and  that  his  income  was 
augmented  one-half  to  three-fifths  by  his  belief  in  the 
future  of  maple-sugar.  It  was  likely  to  be  the  great  coming 
crop  of  the  Green  Mountain  State.     Ederton  suggested 

15  that  there  was  talk  of  Mr.  Pinkham's  presence  in  the 
matter  of  a  great  maple-sugar  trust  in  which  much  of  the 
capital  of  Wall  Street  would  be  involved. 

*'How  they  do  hatch  up  these  things,  don't  they?"  said 
the  worthy  man  at  this  point.     "Well,  it  all  sounds  well, 

20  Mary  Ann." 

"It  says  here  that  you  are  a  very  personable  man," 
smiled  his  wife,  "and  have  filled  some  of  the  most  responsi- 
ble town  offices"  (this  was  the  turn  taken  by  Goffey  of  the 
Herald.)     "  Oh,   and   that  you  are  going  to  attend   the 

25   performance  at  Barnum's  this  evening,  and  occupy  re- 
served  seats.     Why,  I  didn't  know — who  have  you  told 
about  that  .5^ — who  was  you  talkin'  to  last  night,  Abel.^" 
"I  never  spoke  o'  goin'  to  Barnum's  to  any  livin'  soul," 
insisted  Abel,  flushing.     "I  only  thought  of  it  two  or  three 

30  times  to  myself  that  perhaps  I  might  go  and  take  you. 
Now  that  is  singular;  perhaps  they  put  that  in  just  to 
advertise  the  show." 

"Ain't  it  a  kind  of  a  low  place  for  folks  like  us  to  be  seen 
in?"  suggested  Mrs.  Pinkham  timidly.     "People  seem  to 


418  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

be  payin*  us  all  this  attention,  an'  I  don't  know's 
'twould  be  dignified  for  us  to  go  to  one  o'  them  circus 
places. " 

"I  don't  care;  we  shan't  live  but  once.  I  ain't  comin* 
to  New  York  an'  confine  myself  to  evenin'  meetin's," 
answered  Abel,  throwing  away  discretion  and  morality 
together.  "I  tell  you  I'm  goin'  to  spend  this  sugar-money 
just  as  we've  a  mind  to.  You  worked  hard,  an'  counted  a 
good  while  on  comin',  an'  so've  I;  an'  I  ain't  goin'  to  mince 
my  steps  an'  pinch  and  screw  for  nobody.  I'm  goin'  to 
hire  one  o'  them  hacks  an'  ride  up  to  the  Park." 

"Joe  Fitch  said  we  could  go  right  up  in  one  o'  the  ele- 
vated railroads  for  five  cents,  and  return  when  we  was 
ready,"  protested  Mary  Ann,  who  had  a  thriftier  inclina- 
tion than  her  husband;  but  Mr.  Pinkham  was  not  to  be 
let  or  hindered,  and  they  presently  found  themselves  jjjoing 
up  Fifth  Avenue  in  a  somewhat  battered  open  landau. 
The  spring  sun  shone  upon  them,  and  the  spring  brec/e 
fluttered  the  black  ostrich  tip  on  Mrs.  Pinkham's  durable 
winter  bonnet,  and  brought  the  pretty  color  to  her  faded 
cheeks. 

"There!  this  is  something  like.  Such  people  as  we  arc 
can't  go  meechin'  round;  it  ain't  expected.  Don't  it  pay 
for  a  lot  o'  hard  work  ?"  said  Abel;  and  his  wife  gave  him 
a  pleased  look  for  her  only  answer.  They  were  both 
thinking  of  their  gray  farmhouse  high  on  a  long  western 
slope,  with  the  afternoon  sun  full  in  its  face,  the  old  red 
barn,  the  pasture,  the  shaggy  woods  that  stretched  far  up 
the  mountain  side. 

"I  wish  Sarah  Ann  an'  little  Abel  was  here  to  see  us 
ride  by,"  said  Mary  Ann  Pinkham,  presently.  "I  can't 
seem  to  wait  to  have  'em  get  that  newspaper.  I'm  so 
glad  we  sent  it  right  off  before  we  started  this  mornin'. 
If  Abel  goes  to  the  post  office  comin'  from  school,  as  he 


NARRATION  419 

always  does,  they'll  have  it  to  read  to-morrow  before  supper 
time. " 

This  happy  day  in  two  plain  lives  ended,  as  might  have 
been  expected,  with  the  great  Barnum  show.  Mr.  and 
5  Mrs.  Pinkham  found  themselves  in  possession  of  countless 
advertising  cards  and  circulars  next  morning,  and  these 
added  somewhat  to  their  sense  of  responsibility.  Mrs. 
Pinkham  became  afraid  that  the  hotel-keeper  would 
charge  them  double.    "We've  got  to  pay  for  it  some  way; 

10  there.  I  don't  know  but  I'm  more'n  willin',"  said  the 
good  soul.  *'I  never  did  have  such  a  splendid  time  in  all 
my  life.  Findin'  you  so  respected  way  off  here  is  the  best 
of  anything;  and  then  seein'  them  dear  little  babies  in 
their  nice  carriages,  all  along  the  streets  and  up  to  the 

15  Central  Park!  I  never  shall  forget  them  beautiful  little 
creatures.  And  then  the  houses,  an'  the  bosses,  an'  the 
store- windows,  an'  all  the  rest  of  it!  Well,  I  can't  make 
my  country  pitcher  hold  no  more,  an'  I  want  to  get  home 
an'  think  it  over,  goin'  about  my  housework. " 

20  They  were  just  entering  the  door  of  the  Ethan  Allen 
Hotel  for  the  last  time,  when  a  young  man  met  them  and 
bowed  cordially.  He  was  the  original  reporter  of  their 
arrival,  but  they  did  not  know  it,  and  the  impulse  was 
strong  within  him  to  formally  invite  Mr.  Pinkham  to  make 

25  an  address  before  the  memV)ers  of  the  Produce  Exchange  on 
the  following  morning;  but  he  had  been  a  country  boy 
himself,  and  their  look  of  seriousness  and  self-conscious- 
ness appealed  to  him  unexpectedly.  He  wondered  what 
effect  this  great  experience  would  have  upon  their  after- 

30  life.  The  best  fun,  after  all,  would  be  to  send  marked 
copies  of  his  paper  and  Ederton's  to  all  the  weekly  news- 
papers in  that  part  of  Vermont.  He  saw  before  him  the 
evidence  of  their  happy  increase  of  self-respect,  and  he 


420  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

would  make  all  their  neighborhood  agree  to  do  them 
honor.     Such  is  the  dominion  of  the  press. 

"Who  was  that  young  man.?  He  kind  of  bowed  to 
you, "  asked  the  lady  from  Wetherford,  after  the  journalist 
had  meekly  passed;  but  Abel  Pinkham,  Esquire,  could 
only  tell  her  that  he  looked  like  a  young  fellow  who  was 
sitting  in  the  office  the  evening  that  they  came  to  the  hotel. 
The  reporter  did  not  seem  to  these  distinguished  persons 
to  be  a  young  man  of  any  consequence. 

Suggestions:  The  narrative  technique  of  this  little  story 
of  Miss  Jewett's  is  interesting  because  of  its  combined  simplicity 
and  effectiveness.  After  your  first  reading  of  it,  state  the  whole 
plot  briefly  in  your  own  words,  and  note  the  difference  between 
such  a  summary  and  the  actual  finished  story.  In  what  form, 
or  from  what  source  should  you  guess  that  the  story  first  occurred 
to  its  author.^  How  long  a  period  of  time  is  covered  or  sug- 
gested by  the  complete  sequence  of  events.^  How  late  in  the 
development  of  this  sequence  of  events,  or  "action,"  does  the 
actual  printed  narrative  begin  ?  How  are  we  informed  as  to  the 
life  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Pinkham  before  their  New  York  visit 
begins?  What  is  the  result,  upon  the  final  effect,  of  this  ap- 
parent reversal  of  chronological  order.' 

Who  tells  the  story  .-^  Are  we,  on  the  whole,  in  more  confi- 
dential relations  with  any  one  character  than  with  another? 
What  changes  in  the  narrative  would  inevitably  occur  if  Mr. 
Pinkham  or  Mrs.  Pinkham  were  to  tell  the  story,  in  the  first 
person  ? 

How  vivid,  to  you,  are  the  characters,  respectively?  How 
is  their  representation  accomplished? 

What  of  the  setting  and  the  "local  color"  of  this  story? 

In  writing  your  own  story,  from  one  of  the  adapted  plots, 
decide  first  of  all  upon  that  point  in  the  sequence  of  events 
at  which  your  own  actual  written  narrative  had  best  begin. 
This  decision  will  be  especially  significant  in  the  case  of  plot 
(b).  In  all  three  plots,  however,  the  greatest  possible  brief- 
ness, and  concentration  of  the  "action  proper"  should  be 
secured. 

Determine  carefully  the  point  of  view,  i.  e.,  the  person  who 


NARRATION  421 

is  to  tell  the  story.     Let  your  characters  exhibit  themselves  by 
their  own  conversation  alone,  in  so  far  as  this  is  possible. 

Give  due  thought  to  the  mode  of  actually  starting  your  story. 
Choose   appropriate,  names    for   persons   and   places. 

ADAPTED  PLOTS 

(a).  An  old  farmer  and  his  wife  have  lived  during  their 
whole  lives  in  a  remote  New  England  village.  At  length  the 
time  comes  when  their  married  son,  in  New  York  City,  con- 
siders it  unsafe  for  the  old  people  to  live  longer  alone  and 
insists  that  they  shall  come  to  make  their  home  with  him.  The 
old  couple,  however,  are  deeply  grieved  at  the  idea  of  giving  up 
their  own  home,  and — as  they  consider  it — their  independence. 
At  last,  the  doctor  tells  them  that  neither  one  of  them  will  prob- 
ably survive  another  rigorous  winter  in  the  country.  Upon  this, 
the  old  man  and  his  wife  deliberately  expose  themselves  to  a 
severe  storm,  in  order  to  contract  pneumonia  and  thus  avoid 
the   dreaded   removal. 

Finish  the  plot  in  any  way  which  seems  to  you  appropriate. 

(b).  An  old  woman  had  lived  for  many  years  as  servant 
to  a  family  in  a  remote  New  England  village.  Upon  the  death  of 
the  last  member  of  the  family,  the  town  seized  the  estate  for  taxes, 
and  the  old  woman  was  left  destitute,  except  for  a  few  articles 
of  household  furniture  bequeathed  to  her  by  her  former  em- 
ployer. There  was  no  almshouse  in  the  village,  and  no  private 
family  was  willing  to  take  her  in.  The  old  woman  conceives  the 
idea  of  moving  her  bed  and  stove  into  the  gallery  of  the  meeting- 
house, and  earning  her  living  by  being  sexton.  This  she  does,  in 
the  face  of  a  refusal  from  the  deacons.  After  she  is  installed 
in  the  church,  the  community  cannot  turn  her  out,  and  she  cares 
for  the  church  so  faithfully,  that  their  pity  and  sympathy  are 
finally  awakened,  and  by  common  consent  they  permit  her  to  stay. 

(c).  A  young  workingman  is  living  happily  with  his  bride 
in  a  small  manufacturing  town.  Quite  suddenly  the  husband 
is  discharged,  without  being  able  to  learn  the  reason  why.  He 
and  his  wife  start  out  together,  on  foot,  to  seek  work  in  another 
town.  They  walk  for  a  long  distance,  but  are  always  unsuc- 
cessful. At  last  they  take  refuge  in  a  deserted  farmhouse,  and  the 
husband  falls  ill.    The  wife  finds  a  half  broken-down  buggy 


422  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

in  the  old  barn,  and  harnessing  herself  to  this,  draws  her  hus- 
band three  miles  to  the  next  town,  to  beg  a  doctor's  aid.  A 
kind  family  gives  them  shelter,  the  husband  gets  well,  and  finds 
work   at  last. 


THE  MAN  WHO  WAS 

RuDYARD  Kipling 

X  ET  it  be  clearly  understood  that  the  Russian  is  a 
-■^^  delightful  person  till  he  tucks  in  his  shirt.  As  an 
Oriental  he  is  charming.  It  is  only  when  he  insists  upon 
being  treated  as  the  most  easterly  of  western  peoples  in- 
stead of  the  most  westerly  of  easterns  that  he  becomes  5 
a  racial  anomaly  extremely  difficult  to  handle.  The  host 
never  knows  which  side  of  his  nature  is  going  to  turn  up 
next. 

Dirkovitch  was  a  Russian — a  Russian  of  the  Russians — 
who  appeared  to  get  his  bread  by  serving  the  Czar  as  an  10 
officer  in  a  Cossack  regiment,  and  corresponding"  for  a 
Russian  newspaper  with  a  name  that  was  never  twice 
alike.  He  was  a  handsome  young  Oriental,  fond  of  wan- 
dering through  unexplored  portions  of  the  earth,  and  he 
arrived  in  India  from  nowhere  in  particular.  At  least,  15 
no  living  man  could  ascertain  whether  it  was  by  way 
of  Balkh,  Badakshan,  Chitual,  Beluchistan,  Nepaul,  or 
anywhere  else.  The  Indian  Government,  being  in  an 
unusually  affable  mood,  gave  orders  that  he  was  to  be 
civilly  treated  and  shown  everything  that  was  to  be  seen.  20 
So  he  drifted,  talking  bad  English  and  worse  French, 
from  one  city  to  another  till  he  foregathered  with  Her 
Majesty's  White  Hussars  in  the  city  of  Peshawur,  which 
stands  at  the  mouth  of  tliat  narrow  sword-cut  in  the  hills 
that  men  call  the  Kliyber  Pass.     He  was  undoubtedly  25 


NARRATION  423 

an  officer,  and  he  was  decorated  after  the  manner  of  the 
Russians  with  httle  enameled  crosses,  and  he  could  talk, 
and  (although  this  has  nothing  to  do  with  his  merits)  he 
had  been  given  up  as  a  hopeless  task,  or  cask,  by  the  black 

5  Tyrones,  who,  individually  and  collectively,  with  hot  whis- 
key and  honey,  mulled  brandy  and  mixed  spirits  of  every 
kind,  had  striven  in  all  hospitality  to  make  him  drunk. 
And  when  the  Black  Tyrones,  who  are  exclusively  Irish, 
fail  to  disturb  the  peace  of  head  of  a  foreigner,  that  for- 

10  eigner  is  certain  to  be  a  superior  man. 

The  White  Hussars  were  as  conscientious  in  choosing 
their  wine  as  in  charging  the  enemy.  All  that  they  pos- 
sessed, including  some  wondrous  brandy,  was  placed  at 
the  absolute  disposition   of   Dirkovitch,   and  he  enjoyed 

15  himself  hugely — even  more  than  among  the  Black  Tyrones. 

But   he  remained    distressingly    European    through    it 

all.     The  White  Hussars  were  "My  dear  true  friends," 

"Fellow-soldiers  glorious,"  and    "Brothers  inseparable." 

He  would  unburden  himself  by  the  hour  on  the  glorious 

20  future  that  awaited  the  combined  arms  of  England  and 
Russia  when  their  hearts  and  their  territories  should 
run  side  by  side,  and  the  great  mission  of  civilizing 
Asia  should  begin.  That  was  unsatisfactory,  because 
Asia   is    not   going    to    be    civilized    after    the    methods 

25  of  the  West.  There  is  too  much  Asia  and  she  is  too  old. 
You  cannot  reform  a  lady  of  many  lovers,  and  Asia  has 
been  insatiable  in  her  flirtations  aforetime.  She  will  never 
attend  Sunday-school  or  learn  to  vote  save  with  swords 
for  tickets. 

30  Dirkovitch  knew  this  as  well  as  any^  one  else,  but  it 
suited  him  to  talk  special-correspondently,  and  to  make 
himself  as  genial  as  he  could.  Now  and  then  he  volun- 
teered a  little — -a  very  little — information  about  his  own 
Sotnia  of  Cossacks  left  apparently  to  look  after  themselves 


424  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

somewhere  at  the  back  of  beyond.  He  had  done  rou^h 
work  in  Central  Asia,  and  had  seen  rather  more  help- 
yourself  fighting  than  most  men  of  his  years.  But  he 
was  careful  never  to  betray  his  superiority,  and  more  than 
careful  to  praise  on  all  occasions  the  appearance,  drill,  5 
uniform,  and  organization  of  Her  Majesty's  White  Hussars. 
And,  indeed,  they  were  a  regiment  to  be  admired.  When 
Mrs.  Durgan,  widow  of  the  late  Sir  John  Durgan,  arrived 
in  their  station,  and  after  a  short  time  had  been  proposed 
to  by  every  single  man  at  mess,  she  put  the  public  senti-  10 
ment  very  neatly  when  she  explained  that  they  were  all  so 
nice  that  unless  she  could  marry  them  all,  including  the  col- 
onel and  some  majors  already  married,  she  was  not  going  to 
content  herself  with  one  Hussar.  Wherefore  she  wedded 
a  little  man  in  a  rifle  regiment,  being  by  nature  contra-  15 
dictions;  and  the  White  Hussars  were  going  to  wear 
crape  on  their  arms,  but  compromised  by  attending  the 
wedding  in  full  force,  and  lining  the  aisle  with  unutterable 
reproach.  She  had  jilted  them  all — from  Basset-Holmer, 
the  senior  captain,  to  little  Mildred,  the  junior  subaltern,  20 
who  could  have  given  her  four  thousand  pounds  a  year  and 
a  title. 

The  only  persons  who  did  not  share  the  general  regard 
for  the  White  Hussars  were  a  few  thousand  gentlemen 
of  Hebrew  extraction  who  lived  across  the  border  and  25 
answered  to  the  name  of  Pathan.  They  had  once  met  the 
regiment  officially,  and  for  something  less  than  twenty 
minutes,  but  the  interview,  which  was  complicated  with 
many  casualties,  had  filled  them  with  prejudice.  They 
even  called  the  White  Hussars  children  of  the  devil  and  sons  30 
of  persons  whom  it  would  be  perfectly  impossible  to  meet 
in  decent  society.  Yet  they  were  not  above  making  their 
aversion  fill  their  money-belts.  The  regiment  possessed 
carbines — beautiful  Martini-Henry  carbines  that  would  lob 


NARRATION  425 

a  bullet  into  an  enemy's  camp  at  one  thousand  yards,  and 
were  even  handier  than  the  long  rifle.  Therefore  they  were 
coveted  all  along  the  border,  and  since  demand  inevitably 
breeds  supply,  they  were  supplied  at  the  risk  of  life  and  limb 
5  for  exactly  their  weight  in  coined  silver — seven  and  one- 
half  pounds'  weight  of  rupees,  or  sixteen  pounds  sterling, 
reckoning  the  rupee  at  par.  They  were  stolen  at  night 
by  snaky-haired  thieves,  who  crawled  on  their  stomachs 
under  the  nose  of  the   sentries;  they  disappeared   myste- 

10  riously  from  locked  arm-racks,  and  in  the  hot  weather, 
when  all  the  barrack  doors  and  windows  were  open,  they 
vanished  like  puffs  of  their  own  smoke.  The  border 
people  desired  them  for  family  vendettas  and  contingencies. 
But  in  the  long  cold  nights  of  the  Northern  Indian  winter 

15  they  were  stolen  most  extensively.  The  traffic  of  murder 
was  liveliest  among  the  hills  at  that  season,  and  prices 
ruled  high.  The  regimental  guards  were  first  doubled 
and  then  trebled.  A  trooper  does  not  much  care  if  he 
loses  a  weapon — Government  must  make  it  good^-but 

20  he  deeply  resents  the  loss  of  his  sleep.  The  regiment  grew 
very  angry,  and  one  rifle-thief  bears  the  visible  marks 
of  their  anger  upon  him  to  this  hour.  That  incident 
stopped  the  burglaries  for  a  time,  and  the  guards  were 
reduced    accordingly;  and    the    regiment    devoted    itself 

25  to  polo  with  unexpected  results,  for  it  beat  by  two  goals 
to  one  that  very  terrible  polo  corps,  the  Lushkar  Light 
Horse,  though  the  latter  had  four  ponies  apiece  for  a 
short  hour's  fight,  as  well  as  a  native  officer,  who  played 
like  a  lambent  flame  across  the  ground. 

30  They  gave  a  dinner  to  celebrate  the  event.  The  Lush- 
kar team  came,  and  Dirkovitch  came,  in  the  fullest  full 
uniform  of  a  Cossack  officer,  which  is  as  full  as  a  dress- 
ing-gown, and  was  introduced  to  the  Lushkars  and 
opened  his   eyes   as   he   regarded.     They   were    lighter 


426  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

men  than  the  Hussars,  and  they  carried  themselves  with 
the  swing  that  is  the  peculiar  right  of  the  Punjab  frontier 
force  and  all  irregular  horse.  Like  everything  else  in 
the  service,  it  has  to  be  learned;  but,  unlike  many  things, 
it  is  never  forgotten,  and  remains  on  the  body  till  death.   ^ 

The  great  beam-roofed  mess  room  of  the  White  Hussars 
was  a  sight  to  be  remembered.  All  the  mess  plate  was 
out  on  a  long  table — the  same  table  that  had  served  up 
the  bodies  of  five  ofiicers  after  a  forgotten  fight  long  and 
long  ago — the  dingy,  battered  standards  faced  the  door  IC 
of  entrance,  clumps  of  winter  roses  lay  between  the  silver 
candlesticks,  and  the  portraits  of  eminent  oflScers  deceased 
looked  down  on  their  successors  from  between  the  heads 
of  sambhur,  nilghai,  markhor,  and,  pride  of  all  the  mess, 
two  grinning  snow-leopards  that  had  cost  Basset-Holmer  1^ 
four  months'  leave  that  he  might  have  spent  in  England 
instead  of  on  the  road  to  Thibet,  and  the  daily  risk  of  his 
life  by  ledge,  snow-slide  and  grassy  slope. 

The  servants,  in  spotless  white  muslin  and  the  crests 
of  their  regiments  on  the  brow  of  their  turbans,  waited  be-  iq 
hind  their  masters,  who  were  clad  in  the  scarlet  and  gold 
of  the  White  Hussars,  and  the  cream  and  silver  of  the 
Lushkar  Light  Horse.  Dirkovitch's  dull  green  uniform 
was  the  only  dark  spot  at  the  board,  but  his  big  onyx  eyes 
made  up  for  it.  He  was  fraternizing  effusively  with  the  25 
captain  of  the  Lushkar  team,  who  was  wondering  how 
many  of  Dirkovitch's  Cossacks  his  own  long,  lathy  down- 
countrymen  could  account  for  in  a  fair  charge.  But  one 
does  not  speak  of  these  things  openly. 

The  talk  rose  higher  and  higher,  and  the  regimental  30 
band  played  between  the  courses,  as  is  the  immemorial 
custom,  till  all  tongues  ceased  for  a  moment  with  the  re- 
moval of  the  dinner  slips  and  the  first  toast  of  obligation, 
when  the  colonel,  rising,  said,  "Mr.  Vice,  the  Queen," 


NARRATION  427 

and  little  Mildred  from  the  bottom  of  the  table  answere  I . 
"The  Queen,  God  bless  her!"  and  the  big  spurs  clanke  1 
as  the  big  men  heaved  themselves  up  and  drank  the  Queen, 
upon  whose  pay  they  were  falsely  supposed  to  settle  their 
5  mess  bills.  That  sacrament  of  the  mess  never  grows  old, 
and  never  ceases  to  bring  a  lump  into  the  throat  of  the 
listener  wherever  he  be,  by  sea  or  by  land.  Dirkovitch 
rose  with  his  "brothers  glorious,"  but  he  could  not  under- 
stand.    No  one   but  an  officer  could  tell  what  the  toast 

10  means;  and  the  bulk  have  more  sentiment  than  compre- 
hension. Immediately  after  the  little  silence  that  follows 
on  the  ceremony  there  entered  the  native  officer  who  had 
played  for  the  Lushkar  team.  He  could  not,  of  course,  eat 
with  the  mess,  but  he  came  in  at  dessert,  all  six  feet  of  hjm, 

15  with  the  blue  and  silver  turban  atop  and  the  big  black 
boots  below.  The  mess  rose  joyously  as  he  thrust  for- 
ward the  hilt  of  his  saber,  in  token  of  fealty,  for  the  colonel 
of  the  White  Hussars  to  touch,  and  dropped  into  a  vacant 
chair  amid  shouts  of  "Rung  ho,  Hira   Singh!"     (which 

20  being  translated  means,  "Go  in  and  win!").  "Did  I 
whack  you  over  the  knee,  old  man  ?"  "Ressaidar  Sahib, 
what  the  devil  made  you  play  that  kicking  pig  of  a  pony 
in  the  last  ten  minutes?"  "Shabash,  Ressaidar,  Sahib!" 
Then  the  voice  of  the  colonel,  "The  health  of  the  Ressai- 

25  dar  Hira  Singh!" 

After  the  shouting  had  died  away,  Hira  Singh  rose  to 
reply,  for  he  was  the  cadet  of  a  royal  house,  the  son  of 
a  king's  son,  and  knew  what  was  due  on  these  occasions. 
Thus  he  spoke  in  the  vernacular:  "Colonel  Sahib  and  offi- 

30  cers  of  this  regiment,  much  honor  have  you  done  me.  This 
will  I  remember.  We  came  down  from  afar  to  play  you. 
But  we  were  beaten."  ("No  fault  of  yours,  Ressaidar 
Sahib.  Played  on  our  own  ground,  y'know.  Your  ponies 
were    cramped    from    the    railway.     Don't    apologize!") 


428  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"Therefore,  perhaps,  we  will  come  again  if  it  be  so  or- 
dained." ("Hear!  Hear!  Hear,  indeed!  Bravo!  Hsh!") 
"Then  we  will  play  you  afresh — "  ("Happy  to  meet  you") 
"  — till  there  are  left  no  feet  upon  our  ponies.  Thus  far 
for  sport."  He  dropped  one  hand  on  his  sword-hilt  5 
and  his  eye  wandered  to  Dirkovitch  lolling  back  in  his 
chair.  "But  if  by  the  will  of  God  there  arises  any  other 
game  which  is  not  the  polo  game,  then  be  assured.  Colonel 
Sahib  and  officers,  that  we  will  play  it  out  side  by  side, 
though  they,"  again  his  eye  sought  Dirkovitch,  "though  10 
they,  I  say,  have  fifty  ponies  to  our  one  horse."  And 
with  a  deep-mouthed  Rung  ho!  that  sounded  like  a  musket 
butt  on  flagstones,  he  sat  down  amid  leaping  glasses. 

Dirkovitch,  who  had  devoted  himself  steadily  to  the 
brandy — the  terrible  brandy  aforementioned — did  not  15 
understand,  nor  did  the  expurgated  translations  offered 
to  him  at  all  convey  the  point.  Decidedly  Hira  Singh's 
was  the  speech  of  the  evening,  and  the  clamor  might  have 
continued  to  the  dawn  had  it  not  been  broken  by  the 
noise  of  a  shot  without  that  sent  every  man  feeling  at  his  ^0 
defenseless  left  side.  Then  there  was  a  scuffle  and  a  yell 
of  pain. 

"Carbine-stealing  again!" said  the  adjutant,  calmly  sink- 
ing back  into  his  chair.  "This  comes  of  reducing  the 
guards.     I  hope  the  sentries  have  killed  him."  25 

The  feet  of  armed  men  pounded  on  the  veranda  flags 
and  it  was  as  though  something  was  being  dragged. 

"Why  don't  they  put  him  in  the  cells  tiU  the  morning?" 
said  the  colonel  testily.  "See  if  they've  damaged  him, 
sergeant. "  30 

The  mess  sergeant  fled  out  into  the  darkness  and  re- 
turned with  two  troopers  and  a  corporal,  all  very  much 
perplexed. 

"Caught  a  man  stealin'  carbines,  sir,"  said  the  cor- 


NARRATION  429 

poral,  "leastways  'e  was  crawlin'  toward  the  barricks, 
sir,  past  the  main  road  sentries,  an'  the  sentry  'e  says, 
sir—" 

The  limp  heap  of  rags  upheld  by  the  three  men  groaned. 
5  Never  was  seen  so  destitute  and  demoralized  an  Afghan. 
He  was  turbanless,  shoeless,  caked  with  dirt,  and  all  but 
dead  with  rough  handling.  Hira  Singh  started  slightly 
at  the  sound  of  the  man's  pain.  Dirkovitch  took  another 
glass  of  brandy. 

10       ''What  does  the  sentry  say?"  said  the  colonel. 
"Sez  'e  speaks  English,  sir,"  said  the  corporal. 
"So  you  brought  him  into  the  mess  instead  of  handing 
him  over  to  the  sergeant!       If  he  spoke  all  the  tongues 
of  the  Pentecost  you've  no  business — " 

15  Again  the  bundle  groaned  and  muttered.  Little 
Mildred  had  risen  from  his  place  to  inspect.  He  jumped 
back  as  though  he  had  been  shot. 

"Perhaps  it  would  be  better,  sir,  to  send  the  men  away," 
said  he  to  the  colonel,  for  he  was  a  much  privileged  sub- 

20  altern.  He  put  his  arms  round  the  rag-bound  horror 
as  he  spoke,  and  dropped  him  into  a  chair.  It  may  not 
have  been  explained  that  the  littleness  of  Mildred  lay  in 
his  being  six  feet  four  and  big  in  proportion.  The  corporal, 
seeing  that  an  officer  was  disposed  to  look  after  the  cap- 

25  'ture,  and  that  the  colonel's  eyes  were  beginning  to  blaze, 
promptly  removed  himself  and  his  men.  The  mess 
was  left  alone  with  the  carbine  thief,  who  laid  his  head 
on  the  table,  and  wept  bitterly,  hopelessly,  and  incon- 
solably,  as  little  children  weep. 

30  Hira  Singh  leaped  to  his  feet.  "  Colonel  Sahib, "  said  he, 
"that  man  is  no  Afghan,  for  they  weep  Ail  Ail  Nor 
is  he  of  Hindustan,  for  they  weep  Oh!  Ho!  He  weeps 
after  the  fashion  of  the  white  men,  who  say  Ow! 
Ow!'' 


430  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"Now  where  the  dickens  did  you  get  that  knowledge, 
Hira  Singh?"  said  the  captain  of  the  Lushkar  team. 

"Hear  him!"  said  Hira  Singh,  simply,  pointing  at 
the  crumpled  figure  that  wept  as  though  it  would  never 
cease.  5 

"He  said  *My  God!'"  said  little  Mildred.  "I  heard 
him  say  it. " 

The  colonel   and  the  mess-room   looked  at  the  man  in 
silence.       It  is  a  horrible  thing  to  hear  a  man  cry.      A 
woman  can  sob  from  the  top  of  her  palate  or  her  lips,  or   1( 
anywhere  else,  but  a  man  must  cry  from  his  diaphragm, 
and  it  rends  him  to  pieces. 

"Poor  devil!"  said  the  colonel,  coughing  tremendously. 
"We  ought  to  send  him  to  hospital.  He's  been  man- 
handled." U 

Now  the  adjutant  loved  his  carbines.  They  were  to 
him  as  his  grandchildren,  the  men  standing  in  the  first 
place.  He  grunted  rebelliously :  "I  can  understand  an 
Afghan  stealing,  because  he's  built  that  way.  But  I  can't 
understand  his  crying.     That  makes  it  worse. "  20 

The  brandy  must  have  affected  Dirkovitch,  for  he  lay 
back  in  his  chair  and  stared  at  the  ceiling.  There  was 
nothing  special  in  the  ceiling  beyond  a  shadow  as  of  a  huge 
black  coffin.  Owing  to  some,  peculiarity  in  the  con- 
struction of  the  mess  room  this  shadow  was  always  thrown  25 
when  the  candles  were  lighted.  It  never  disturbed  the 
digestion  of  the  "White  Hussars.  They  were  in  fact  rather 
proud  of  it. 

"Is  he  going  to  cry  ail   night?"  said  the  colonel,  "or 
are  we  supposed  to  sit  up  with  little  Mildred's  guest  until  30 
he  feels   better?" 

The  man  in  the  chair  threw  up  his  head  and  stared  at 
the  mess. 

"Oh,  my  God!"  he  said,  and  every  soul  in  the  mess 


NARRATION  431 

rose  to  his  feet.  Then  the  Lushkar  captain  did  a  deed 
f ( r  w'lich  he  ought  to  have  been  given  the  Victoria 
Cross  -cHstinguished  gallantry  in  a  fight  against  over- 
whelming curiosity.  He  picked  up  his  team  with  his 
5  eyes  as  the  hostess  picks  up  the  ladies  at  the  opportune 
moment,  and  pausing  only  by  the  colonel's  chair  to  say, 
"This  isn't  our  affair,  you  know,  sir,"  led  them  into  the 
veranda  and  the  gardens.  Hira  Singh  was  the  last  to 
go  and   he  looked   at  Dirkovitch.     But  Dirkovitch  had 

10  departed  into  a  brandy  paradise  of  his  own.  His  lips 
moved  without  sound  and  he  was  studying  the  coffin  on 
the  ceiling. 

"White — white  all  over,"  said    Basset-Holmer,  the  ad- 
jutant.     "What    a    pernicious  renegade  he  must  be!     I 

J5  wonder  where  he  came  from.^" 

The   colonel   shook   the  man  gently    by  the  arm,  and 
"Who  are  you  ?"  said  he. 

There  was  no  answer.     The  man  stared   around  the 
mess  room    and    smiled    in    the    colonel's    face.      Little 

20  Mildred,  who  was  always  more  of  a  woman  than  a  man 
till  "Boot  and  saddle"  was  sounded,  repeated  the  question 
in  a  voice  that  would  have  drawn  confidences  from  a  gey- 
ser. The  man  only  smiled.  Dirkovitch,  at  the  far  end 
of  the  table,  slid  gently  from  his  chair  to  the  floor.     No 

25  son  of  Adam  in  this  present  imperfect  world  can  mix  the 
Hussars'  champagne  with  the  Hussars'  brandy  by  five  and 
eight  glasses  of  each  without  remembering  the  pit  whence 
he  was  digged  and  descending  thither.  The  band  began 
to  play  the  tune  with  which  the  White  Hussars  from  the 

30  date  of  their  formation  have  concluded  all  their  functions. 
They  would  sooner  be  disbanded  than  abandon  that  tune; 
it  is  a  part  of  their  system.     The  man  straightened  him- 
self in  his  chair  and  drummed  on  the  table  with  his  fingers. 
"I  don't  see  why.  we  should  entertain  lunatics,"  said 


432  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

the  colonel.  "Call  a  guard  and  send  him  off  to  the  cells 
We'll  look  into  the  business  in  the  morning.  Give  him 
a  glass  of  wine  first,  though." 

Little  Mildred  filled  a  sherry  glass  with  the  brandy  and 
thrust  it  over  to  the  man.  He  drank,  and  the  tune  rose 
louder,  and  he  straightened  himself  yet  more.  Then  he 
put  out  his  long-taloned  hands  to  a  piece  of  plate  opposite 
and  fingered  it  lovingly.  There  was  a  mystery  connected 
with  that  piece  of  plate,  in  the  shape  of  a  spring  which 
converted  what  was  a  seven -I  ranched  candlestick,  three 
springs  on  each  side  and  one  in  the  middle,  into  a  sort 
of  wheel-spoke  candelabrum.  He  found  the  spring, 
pressed  it,  and  laughed  weakly.  He  rose  from  his  chair 
and  inspected  a  picture  on  the  wall,  then  moved  on 
to  another  picture,  the  mess  watching  him  without  a 
word.  When  he  came  to  the  mantelpiece  he  shook  his 
head  and  seemed  distressed.  A  piece  of  plate  represent- 
ing a  mounted  hussar  in  full  uniform  caught  his  eye. 
He  pointed  to  it,  and  then  to  the  mantelpiece,  with  inquiry 
in  his  eyes. 

"What  is  it— Oh!  what  is  it.?"  said  little  Mildred. 
Then  as  a  mother  might  speak  to  a  child,  "That  is  a 
horse.     Yes,  a  horse." 

Very  slowly  came  the  answer  in  a  thick,  passionless 
guttural:  "Yes,  I — have  seen.     But — where  is  tfie  horse ?" 

You  could  have  heard  the  hearts  of  the  mess  beating 
as  the  men  drew  back  to  give  the  stranger  full  room  in 
his  wanderings.  There  was  no  question  of  calling  the 
guard. 

Again  he  spoke — very  slowly,  "Where  is  our  horse?" 

There  is  but  one  horse  in  the  White  Hussars,  and  his 
portrait  hangs  outside  the  door  of  the  mess-room.  He  is 
the  piebald  drum-horse,  the  king  of  the  regimental  band, 
that  served  the  regiment  for  seven-and-thirty  years,  and  in 


NARRATION  433 

the  end  was  shot  for  old  age.  Half  the  mess  tore  the  thing 
down  from  its  place  and  thrust  it  into  the  man's  hands.  He 
placed  it  above  the  mantelpiece ;  it  clattered  on  the  ledge  as 
his  poor  hand  dropped  it,  and  he  staggered  towards  the  bot- 
tom of  the  table,  falling  into  Mildred's  chair.  Then  all  the 
men  spoke  to  one  another  after  this  fashion:  "The  drum- 
horse  hasn't  hung  over  the  mantelpiece  since  '67." 
*'How  does  he  know.?"  "Mildred,  go  and  speak  to 
him  again. "  "  Colonel,  what  are  you  going  to  do .?"  "  Oh, 
dry  up  and  give  the  poor  devil  a  chance  to  pull  himself 
together."  "It  isn't  possible,  anyhow.  The  man's  a 
lunatic. " 

Little  Mildred  stood  at  the  colonel's  side  talking  in 
his  ear.  "Will  you  be  good  enough  to  take  your  seats 
please,  gentlemen.?"  he  said,  and  the  mess  dropped  into 
the  chairs.  Only  Dirkovitch's  seat,  next  to  little  Mildred's, 
was  blank,  and  little  Mildred  himself  had  found  Hira 
Singh's  place.  The  wide-eyed  mess  sergeant  filled  the 
glasses  in  dead  silence.  Once  more  the  colonel  rose, 
but  his  hand  shook,  and  the  port  spilled  on  the  table  as 
he  looked  straight  at  the  man  in  little  Mildred's  chair, 
and  said  hoarsely:  "Mr.  Vice,  the  Queen."  There  was 
a  little  pause,  but  the  man  sprang  to  his  feet  and  answered 
without  hesitation,  "The  Queen,  God  bless  her!"  and 
as  he  emptied  the  glass  he  snapped  the  shank  between 
his  fingers. 

Long  and  long  ago,  when  the  Empress  of  India  was  a 
young  woman,  and  there  were  no  unclean  ideals  in  the 
land,  it  was  the  custom  of  a  few  messes  to  drink  the 
Queen's  toast  in  broken  glass,  to  the  huge  delight  of  the 
mess  contractors.  The  custom  is  now  dead,  because  there 
is  nothing  to  break  anything  for,  except  now  and  again 
the  word  of  a  Government,  and  that  has  been  broken 
already. 


434  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"That  settles  it,"  said  the  colonel,  with  a  gasp.  "He's 
not  a  sergeant.     What  in  the  world  is  he  ?" 

The  entire  mess  echoed  the  word,  and  the  volley  of 
questions  would  have  scared  any  man.     Small  wonder 
that    the   ragged,   filthy   invader   could    only   smile   and   5 
shake  his  head. 

From  under  the  table,  calm  and  smiling,  rose  Dirko- 
vitch,  who  had  been  roused  from  healthful  slumber  by 
feet  upon  his  body.  By  the  side  of  the  man  he  rose,  and 
the  man  shrieked  and  grovelled.  It  was  a  horrible  sight,  10 
coming  so  swiftly  upon  the  pride  and  glory  of  the  toast 
that  had  brought  the  strayed  wits  together. 

Dirkovitch  made  no  effort  to  raise  him,  but  little  Mildred 
heaved  him  up  in  an  instant.     It  is  not  good  that  a  gen- 
tleman who  can  answer  to  the  Queen's  toast  should  lie  15 
at  the  feet  of  a  subaltern  of  Cossacks. 

The  hasty  action  tore  the  wretch's  upper  clothing  nearly 
to  the  waist,  and  his  body  was  seamed  with  dry  black  scars. 
There  is  only  one  weapon  in  the  world  that  cuts  in  parallel 
lines,  and  it  is  neither  the  cane  nor  the  cat.  Dirkovitch  20 
saw  the  marks  and  the  pupils  of  his  eyes  dilated.  Also 
his  face  changed.  He  said  something  that  sounded  like 
Shto  ve  taketCy  and  the  man  fawning  answered,  Chctyre. 

"What's  that.''"  said  everybody  together. 

"  His  number.     That  is  number  four  you  know, "  Dirko-  25 
vitch  spoke  very  thickly. 

"What  has  a  Queen's  officer  to  do  with  a  qualified 
number  ?"  said  the  colonel,  and  there  was  an  unpleasant 
growl  around  the  table. 

"How  can  I  tell?"     said  the  affable  Oriental  with  a  30 
sweet   smile.     "He   is   a — how   you   have   it? — escape — 
runaway,   from   over  there."     He   nodded    towards   the 
darkness  of  the  night. 

"Speak  to  him  if  h*»'ll  answer  you,  and  speak  to  him 


NARRATION  4S5 

gently,"  said  little  Mildred,  settling  the  man  in  a  chair. 
It  seemed  most  improper  to  all  present  that  Dirkovitch 
should  sip  brandy  as  he  talked  in  purring,  spitting  Russian 
to  the  creature  who  answered  so  feebly  and  with  such 
5  evident  dread.  But  since  Dirkovitch  appeared  to  un- 
derstand, no  one  said  a  word.  They  breathed  heavily, 
leaning  forward,  in  the  long  gaps  of  the  conversation. 
The  next  time  they  have  no  engagements  on  hand  the 
White  Hussars  intend  to  go  to  St.  Petersburg  in  a  body 

10  to  learn  Russian. 

"He  does  not  know  how  many  years  ago,"  said  Dirko- 
vitch, facing  the  mess,  "but  he  says  it  was  very  long  ago, 
in  a  war.  I  think  there  was  an  accident.  He  says  he 
was  of  this  glorious  and  distinguished  regiment  in  the 

15  war." 

"The  rolls!  The  rolls!  Holmer,  get  the  rolls!"  said 
little  Mildred,  and  the  adjutant  darted  off  bareheaded 
to  the  orderly  room,  where  the  muster  rolls  of  the  regi- 
ment were  kept.     He  returned  just  in  time  to  hear  Dirko- 

20  vitch  conclude,  "Therefore,  my  dear  friends,  I  am  most 
sorry  to  say  there  was  an  accident  which  would  have  been 
reparable  if  he  had  apologized  to  that  our  colonel,  which 
he  had  insulted." 

Then  followed  another  growl  which  the  colonel   tried 

25  to  beat  down.  The  mess  was  in  no  mood  just  then  to 
weigh  insults  to  Russian  colonels. 

"He  does  not  remember,  but  I  think  that  there  was  an 
accident,  and  so  he  was  not  exchanged  among  the  prison- 
ers, but  he  was  sent  to  another  place — how  do  you  say  ? — 

30  the  country.  So,  he  says,  he  came  here.  He  does  not 
know  how  he  came.  Eh.^  He  was  at  Chepany" — the 
man  caught  the  word,  nodded,  and  shivered — "at  Zhigansk 
and  Irkutsk.  I  cannot  understand  how  he  escaped. 
He  says,  too,  he  was  in  the  forest  for  many  years,  but  how 


436  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

many  years  he  has  forgotten — that  with  many  things. 
It  was  an  accident,  done  because  he  did  not  apologize 
to  that  our  coloneL     Ah!" 

Instead  of  echoing  Dirkovitch's  sigh  of  regret,  it  is  sad 
to  record  that  the  White  Hussars  livelily  exhibited  un-  5 
christian  delight  and  other  emotions,  hardly  restrained 
by  their  sense  of  hospitality.  Holmer  flung  the  frayed 
and  yellow  regimental  rolls  on  the  table,  and  the  men  flung 
themselves  a-top  of  these. 

"Steady!  Fifty-six — fifty-five — fifty-four,"  said  Holmer.   10 
"Here    we    are.     *Lieut.    Austin    Limmason.     Missing.' 
That  was  before  Sebastopol.     What  an  infernal  shame! 
Insulted  one  of  their  Colonels  and  was  quietly  shipped 
off.     Thirty  years  of  his  life  wiped  out." 

"But  he  never  apologized.     Said  he'd  see  him  d — d   15 
first,"  chorused  the  mess. 

"Poor  chap!     I  suppose  he  never  had  the  chance  after- 
wards.    How  did   he  come  here?"     said   the   Colonel. 

The  dingy  heap  in  the  chair  could    give  no  answer. 

"Do  you  know  who  you  are?"  20 

It  laughed  weakly. 

"  Do  you  know  that  you  are  Limmason — Lieut.  Lim- 
mason, of  the  White  Hussars?" 

Swiftly  as  a  shot  came  the  answer,  in  a  slightly  sur- 
prised tone.  "Yes,  I'm  Limmason,  of  course."  The  25 
light  died  out  in  his  eyes,  and  he  collapsed  afresh,  watch- 
ing every  movement  of  Dirkovitch  with  terror.  A  flight 
from  Siberia  may  fix  a  few  elementary  facts  in  the  mind, 
but  it  does  not  seem  to  lead  to  continuity  of  thought. 
The  man  could  not  explain  how,  like  a  homing  pigeon,  30 
he  had  found  his  way  to  his  own  old  mess  again.  Of 
what  he  had  suffered  or  seen  he  knew  nothing.  He 
cringed  before  Dirkovitch  as  instinctively  as  he  had 
pressed  the  spring  of  the  candlestick,  sought  the  picture 


NARRATION  487 

of  the  drum-horse,  and  answered  to  the  toast  of  the  Queen. 
The  rest  was  a  blank  that  the  dreaded  Russian  tongue 
could  only  in  part  remove.  His  head  bowed  on  his 
breast  and  he  giggled  and  cowered  alternately. 

5  The  devil  that  lived  in  the  brandy  prompted  Dirkovitch 
at  this  extremely  inopportune  moment  to  make  a  speech. 
He  rose,  swaying  slightly,  gripped  the  table-edge,  while 
his  eyes  glowed  like  opals,  and  began: 

"Fellow-soldiers  glorious,  true  friends  and  hospitables. 

10  — It  was  an  accident,  and  deplorable,  most  deplorable." 
Here  he  smiled  sweetly  all  around  the  mess.  "But  you 
will  think  of  this  little,  little  thing.  So  little,  is  it  not.'' 
The  Czar!  Posh!  I  slap  my  fingers — I  snap  my  fin- 
gers at  him.       Do  I  believe  in  him.?      No!      But  the 

15  Slav  who  has  done  nothing,  him  I  believe.  Seventy — 
how  much — millions  peoples  that  have  done  nothing — 
not  one  thing.  Posh!  Napoleon  was  an  episode." 
He  banged  a  hand  on  the  table.  "Hear  you,  old  peoples, 
we  have  done  nothing  in  the  world — out  here.     All  our 

20  work  is  to  do;  and  it  shall  be  done,  old  peoples.  Get 
away!"  He  waved  his  hand  imperiously,  and  pointed 
to  the  man.  "You  see  him.  He  is  not  good  to  see. 
He  was  just  one  little — oh,  so  little — accident,  that  no 
one   remembered.     Now   he   is    That.     So  will   you   be, 

25  brother  soldiers  so  brave — so  will  you  be.  But  you  will 
never  come  back.  You  will  all  go  where  he  is  gone, 
or — "  he  pointed  to  the  great  coffin-shadow  on  the  ceil- 
ing, and  muttering,  "Seventy  millions — get  away,  you 
old   peoples,"   fell    asleep. 

30       "Sweet  and  to  the  point,"  said  little  Mildred. 

"What's  the  use  of  getting  wroth.     Let's  make  this 
poor  devil  comfortable." 

But  that  was  a  matter  suddenly  and  swiftly  taken  from 
the  loving  hands  of  the  White   Hussars.      The   Lieu- 


438  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

tenant  had  returned  only  to  go  away  again  three  days 
later,  when  the  wail  of  the  Dead  March,  and  the  tramp 
of  the  squadrons,  told  the  wondering  station,  who  saw 
no  gap  in  the  mess-table,  that  an  officer  of  the  regiment 
had  resigned  his  new-found  commission.  5 

And  Dirkovitch,  bland,  supple,  and  always  genial, 
went  away,  too,  by  a  night  train.  Little  Mildred  and 
another  man  saw  him  off,  for  he  was  the  guest  of  the 
mess,  and  even  had  he  smitten  the  Colonel  with  the 
open  hand,  the  law  of  that  mess  allowed  no  relaxation  ^^ 
of  hospitality. 

"Good-by,  Dirkovitch,  and  a  pleasant  journey,"  said 
Mildred. 

*^Au  revoir,*'  said  the  Russian. 

"Indeed!    But  we   thought  you   were  going  home.?"   ^^ 

"Yes,  but  I  will  come  again.  My  dear  friends,  is 
that  road  shut?"  He  pointed  to  where  the  North  Star 
burned  over  the  Khyber  Pass. 

"By  Jove!     I  forgot.     Of  course.     Happy  to  meet  you, 
old  man,  any  time  you  like.     Got  everything  you  want?  ^^ 
Cheroots,    ice,    bedding?      That's    all    right.     Well,    au 
refoiV,  Dirkovitch. " 

"Um,"  said  the  other  man,  as  the  tail-lights  of  the 
train  grew  small.     "Of — all — the — unmitigated — !" 

Little    Mildred    answered    nothing,    but   watched    the  ^^ 
North  Star,  and  hummed  a  selection  from  a  recent  Simla 
burlesque  that  had  much  delighted  the  White   Hussars. 
It  ran : 

I'm  sorry  for  Mister  Bluebeard, 

I'm  sorrv  to  cause  him  pain; 
But  a  terrible  spree  there's  sure  to  be  " 

When  he  comes  back  again. 

Suggestions:  Observe  particularly,  in  The  Man  WJw  Was^ 
the  way  in  which  a  long  series  of  events  is  managed,  and  com- 


NARRATION  439 

bined.  The  events  of  the  story  have  covered  a  period  of  thirty 
years, — the  "action  proper"  of  the  narrative  has  a  much  shorter 
duration. 

At  what  stage  of  the  whole  occurrence  does  the  story  itself 
begin?  Could  it  begin  earlier  or  later,  with  proiSt?  What 
is  the  point  of  view?  ?.  e..  Who  tells  the  story?  Could  one  of 
the  actors  tell  the  story  to  better  advantage?  What  is  the 
artistic  function  of  Dirkovitch?  Could  any  parts  of  the  story 
be  omitted,  with  profit  ? 

Decide  very  carefully,  in  connection  with  the  particular 
plot  you  choose,  the  point  at  which  your  narrative  shall  actually 
begin.  Who  will  be  the  best  person  to  tell  your  story  ?  Change 
the  setting,  if  necessary,  to  a  more  familiar  one.  Choose  care- 
fully your  title,  and  the  names  of  your  characters.  Consider 
well  the  best  way  to  end  each  story. 

ADAPTED    SUBJECTS 

From  one  of  the  following  plots,  write  a  story  which  shall 
be  modeled  in  structure,   on  this  story  of  Kipling's. 

(a).  There  was  a  young  lieutenant  in  an  English  regiment. 
His  family  had  been  rich,  but  now  they  were  very  poor,  and 
had  hard  work  to  keep  up  appearances.  At  a  great  dinner 
given  by  the  colonel,  the  young  officer  secreted  in  his  pocket 
some  delicacies  for  his  mother.  It  happened  that,  during  the 
dinner,  one  of  the  guests  lost  a  very  valuable  jewel.  All  but  the 
lieutenant  consented  to  be  searched.  He  was  disgraced.  The 
jewel  was  afterward  found  in  a  cup  of  coffee.  The  lieutenant 
received  amends  from  his  superior  oflScers,  and  finally  explained 
his  plight  confidentially  to  the  colonel." 
(Quoted  from  Composition  from  Models,  Alexander  and  Libbey,  p.  82.) 

(b).  An  old  peasant  woman  had  lived  for  many  years  in 
the  district  of  Virelogne,  France.  She  had  one  child  only,  a 
son,  who  at  length  was  drafted  into  the  French  army  during  the 
Franco-Prussian  war.  Some  time  after  this,  four  young  Prus- 
sian soldiers  were  quartered  in  the  old  woman's  hut.  One 
day,  she  had  tidings  of  the  killing  of  her  son  by  a  Prussian  shell. 
That  night,  while  the  Prussian  soldiers  were  sleeping,  she  set 
fire  to  the  place,  consuming  both  hut  and  men.  She  then  gave 
herself   up   to  justice. 


440  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

(c).  A  young  man  has  worked  his  way  through  college 
against  the  utmost  difficulties,  and  has  reached  his  Senior  year. 
He  desires  ardently  to  gain  a  Rhodes  Scholarship.  He  learns 
by  accident,  that  the  examination  papers,  which  have  arrived  in 
a  sealed  packet  from  England,  have  been  carelessly  left  on  a 
desk  in  the  registrar's  office,  in  one  of  the  college  buildings.  He 
becomes  possessed  with  a  desire  to  see  them,  and  forcing  open 
a  window  of  the  office,  gains  access  to  the  papers.  After  he 
has  broken  the  seal,  however,  a  wave  of  remorse  overcomes  him, 
and  he  starts  to  retreat,  only  to  be  confronted  by  the  night 
watchman. 

The  night  watchman  reports  to  the  president,  and  the  young 
man  makes  a  clean  breast  of  the  whole  matter.  The  president 
believes  his  story  and  allows  him  to  take  the  examinations.  The 
young  man  passes  first  and,  receiving  the  Rhodes  Scholarship, 
is,  henceforward,  an  exemplary  character. 

(Adapted  from  Materials  for  the  Study  of  Rhetoric  and  Com- 
position, by  F.  N.  Scott.) 


THE  PURLOINED  LETTER 

Edgar  Allen  Poe 


NU  sapierUioB  odiosius  acumine  nimio. 

Seneca 


AT  Paris,  just  after  dark  one  gusty  evening  in  the 
autumn  of  18 — ,  I  was  enjoying  the  twofold  luxury 
of  meditation  and  a  meerschaum,  in  company  with  my 
friend,  C.  Auguste  Dupin,  in  his  little  back  library,  or 
book-closet,  an  troisieme.  No.  33,  Rue  Duudt,  Faubourg 
Saint  Germain.  For  one  hour  at  least  we  had  maintained 
a  profound  silence;  while  each,  to  any  casual  observer, 
might  have  seemed  intently  and  exclusively  occupied  with 
the  curling  eddies  of  smoke  that  oppressed  the  atmosphere 


NARRATION  441 

of  the  chamber.  For  myself,  however,  T  was  mentally 
discussing  certain  topics  which  had  formed  matter  for 
conversation  between  us  at  an  earlier  period  of  the  evening; 
I  mean  the  affair  of  the  Rue  Morgue,  and  the  mystery 
5  attending  the  murder  of  Marie  Roget.  I  looked  upon  it, 
therefore,  as  something  of  a  coincidence,  when  the  door 
of     our    apartment    was    thrown    open    and     admitted 

our  old  acquaintance.  Monsieur  G ,  the  Prefect  of  the 

Parisian  police. 

10  We  gave  him  a  hearty  welcome,  for  there  was  nearly 
half  as  much  of  the  entertaining  as  of  the  contemptible 
about  the  man,  and  we  had  not  seen  him  for  several  years. 
We  had  been  sitting  in  the  dark,  and  Dupin  now  arose  for 
the  purpose  of  lighting  a  lamp,  but  sat  down  again  without 

15  doing  so,  upon  G 's  saying  that  he  had  called  to  consult 

us,  or  rather  to  ask  the  opinion  of  my  friend,  about  some 
official  business  which  had  occasioned  a  great  deal  of 
trouble. 

"If  it  is  any  point  requiring  reflection, "  observed  Dupin, 

20  as  he  forebore  to  enkindle  the  wick,  "we  shall  examine 
it  to  better  purpose  in  the  dark." 

"This  is  another  of  your  odd  notions,"  said  the  Prefect, 
who  had  a  fashion  of  calling  everything  "odd"  that  was 
beyond  his  comprehension,  and  thus  lived  amid  an  absolute 

25  legion  of  "oddities." 

"Very  true,"  said  Dupin,  as  he  supplied  his  visitor 
with  a  pipe,  and  rolled  toward  him  a  comfortable  chair. 

"And  what  is  the  difficulty  now,"  I  asked.  "Noth- 
ing more  in  the  assassination  way,  I  hope.^" 

30  "Oh,  no;  nothing  of  that  nature.  The  fact  is,  the 
business  is  very  simple  indeed,  and  I  make  no  doubt 
that  we  can  manage  it  sufficiently  well  ourselves;  but 
then  I  thought  Dupin  would  like  to  hear  the  details  of  it, 
because  it  is  so  excessivelv  odd.'' 


442  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"Simple  and  odd,"  said  Dupin. 

"Why,  yes;  and  not  exactly  that,  either.  The  fact  is, 
we  have  all  been  a  good  deal  puzzled  because  the  affair  is 
so  simple,  and  yet  baffles  us  altogether." 

"Perhaps  it  is  the  very  simplicity  of  the  thing  which  5 
puts  you  at  fault,"  said  my  friend. 

"What  nonsense  you  do  talk!"  replied  the  Prefect, 
laugking  heartily. 

"Perhaps  the  mystery  is  a  little  too  plain,"  said  Dupin. 

"Oh,  good  heavens!  who  ever  heard  of  such  an  idea?"  10 

"A  little  too.  self-evident." 

"Ha!  ha!  ha! — ha!  ha!  ha! — ho!  ho!  ho!"  roared  our 
visitor,  profoundly  amused,  "O  Dupin,  you  will  be  the 
death  of  me  yet!" 

"And   what,   after  all,   is  the  matter   on   hand?"     I  15 
asked. 

"Why,  T  will  tell  you,"  replied  the  Prefect,  as  he  gave 
a  long,  steady,  and  contemplative  puff,  and  settled  himself 
in  his  chair.  "I  will  tell  you  in  a  few  words;  but,  before 
I  begin,  let  me  caution  you  that  this  is  an  affair  demanding  20 
the  greatest  secrecy,  and  that  I  should  most  probably 
lose  the  position  I  now  hold,  were  it  known  that  I  had 
confided  it  to  any  one." 

"Proceed,"  said  I. 

"Or  not,"  said  Dupin.  25 

"Weil,  then;  I  have  received  personal  information, 
from  a  very  high  quarter,  that  a  certain  document  of  the 
last  importance  has  been  purloined  from  the  royal  apart- 
ments. The  individual  who  purloined  it  is  known;  this 
beyond  a  doubt;  he  was  seen  to  take  it.  It  is  known,  SO 
also,  that  it  still  remains  in  his  possession." 

"How  is  this  known?"  asked  Dupin. 

"It  is  clearly  inferred,"  replied  the  Prefect,  "from 
the  nature  of  the  document,  and  from  the  non-appear- 


NARRATION  443 

ance  of  certain  results  which  would  at  once  arise  from 
its  passing  out  of  the  robber's  possession; — that  is  to  say 
from  his  employing  it  as  he  must  design  in  the  end  to  employ 
it." 
6       "Be  a  little  more  explicit,"  I  said. 

"Well,  I  may  venture  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  paper 
gives  its  holder  a  certain  power  in  a  certain  quarter  where 
such  power  is  immensely  valuable."  The  Prefect  was 
fond  of  the  cant  of  diplomacy. 

10       "Still  I  do  not  quite  understand,"  said  Dupin. 

"No.?  Well;  the  disclosure  of  the  document  to  a 
third  person,  who  shall  be  nameless,  would  bring  in  ques- 
tion the  honor  of  a  personage  of  most  exalted  station; 
and  this  fact  gives  the  holders  of  the  document  an  ascen- 

15  dency  over  the  illustrious  personage  whose  honor  and  peace 
are  so  jeopardized." 

"But  this  ascendency,"  I  interposed,  "would  de- 
pend upon  the  robber's  knowledge  of  the  loser's  know- 
ledge of  the  robber.     Who  would  dare — " 

20       "The  thief,"  said  G ,  "is  the  minister  D ,  who 

dares  all  things,  those  unbecoming  as  well  as  those  becom- 
ing a  man.  The  method  of  the  theft  was  not  less  ingenious 
than  bold.  The  document  in  question — a  letter,  to  be  frank 
— had  been  received  by  the  personage  robbed  while  alone 

25  in  the  royal  boudoir.  During  its  perusal  she  was  suddenly 
interrupted  by  the  entrance  of  the  other  exalted  personage, 
from  whom  especially  it  was  her  wish  to  conceal  it.  After 
a  hurried  and  vain  endeavor  to  thrust  it  in  a  drawer,  she 
was  forced  to  place  it,  open  as  it  was,  upon  a  table.     The' 

30  address,  however,  was  uppermost,  and,  the  contents 
thus  unexposed,  the  letter  escaped  notice.     At  this  juncture 

enters    the  minister  D '—.     His  lynx  eye  immediately 

perceives  the  paper,  recognizes  the  handwriting  of  the 
address,  observes  the  confusion  of  the  personage  addressed, 


444  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

and  fathoms  her  secret.  After  some  business  transactions, 
hurried  through  in  his  ordinary  manner,  he  produces  a 
letter  somewhat  similar  to  the  one  in  question,  opens  it, 
pretends  to  read  it,  and  then  places  it  in  close  juxta- 
position to  the  other.  Again  he  converses  for  some  fifteen  5 
minutes  upon  the  public  affairs.  x\t  length,  in  taking 
leave,  he  takes  also  from  the  table  the  letter  to  which  he 
had  no  claim.  Its  rightful  owner  saw,  but,  of  course, 
dared  not  call  attention  to  the  act,  in  the  presence  of  the 
third  personage,  who  stood  at  her  elbow.  The  minister  lo 
decamped,  leaving  his  own  letter — one  of  no  importance — 
upon  the  table." 

**Here,  then,"  said  Dupin  to  me,  "you  have  precisely 
what  you  demand  to  make  the  ascendency  complete — the 
robber's  knowledge  of  the  loser's  knowledge  of  the  robber. "  15 

*' Yes,  "replied  the  Prefect;  *'and  the  power  thus  attained 
has  for  some  months  past  been  wielded,  for  political 
purposes,  to  a  very  dangerous  extent.  The  personage 
robbed  is  more  thoroughly  convinced  every  day  of  the 
necessity  of  reclaiming  her  letter.  But  this,  of  course,  20 
cannot  be  done  openly.  In  fine,  driven  to  despair,  she 
has  committed  the  matter  to  me." 

"Than  whom,"  said  Dupin,  amid  a  perfect  whirl- 
wind of  smoke,  '*  no  more  sagacious  agent  coul(\,  I  suppose, 
be  desired,  or  even  imagined. "  25 

"You  flatter  me,"  replied  the  Prefect;  "but  it  is  possible 
that  some  such  opinion  may  have  been  entertained. " 

"It  is  clear,"  said  I,  "as  you  observe,  that  the  letter 
is  still  in  possession  of  the  minister;  since  it  is  this  posses- 
sion, and  not  any  employment  of  the  letter,  which  bestows   30 
the  power.     With  the  employment  the  power  departs." 

"  True,  "said  G ;  "  and  "upon  this  conviction  I  pro- 
ceeded. My  first  care  was  to  make  thorough  search  of 
the  minister's  hotel;  and  here  my  chief  embarrassment 


NARRATION  445 

lay  in  the  necessity  of  searching  without  his  knowledge. 
Beyond  all  things,  I  have  been  warned  of  the  danger 
which  would  result  from  giving  him  reason  to  suspect 
our  design." 
5  "But,"  said  I,  "you  are  quite  aufait  in  these  investiga- 
tions. The  Parisian  police  have  done  this  thing  often 
before. " 

"Oh  yes;  and  for  this  reason  I  did  not  despair.     The 
habits  of  the  minister  gave  me,  too,  a  great  advantage. 

1 0  He  is  frequently  absent  from  home  all  night.  His  servants 
are  by  no  means  numerous.  They  sleep  at  a  distance 
from  their  master's  apartment,  and,  being  chiefly  Neapoli- 
tans, are  readily  made  drunk.  I  have  keys,  as  you  know, 
with  which  I  can  open  any  chamber  or  cabinet  in  Paris. 

)5  For  three  months  a  night  has  not  passed  during  the  greater 
part  of  which  I  have  not  been  engaged,  personally,  in 

ransacking  the  D Hotel.    My  honor  is  interested,  and, 

to  mention  a  great  secret,  the  reward  is  enormous.     So  I 
did  not   abandon  the  search  until   I  had  become  fully 

20  satisfied  that  the  thief  is  a  more  astute  man  than  myself. 
I  fancy  that  I  have  investigated  every  nook  and  corner  of 
the  premises  in  which  it  is  possible  that  the  paper  can  be 
concealed." 

"But  is  it  not  possible,"  I  suggested,  "that  although 

25  the  letter  may  be  in  possession  of  the  minister,  as  it  un- 
questionably is,  he  may  have  concealed  it  elsewhere  than 
upon  his  own  premises.^" 

"This  is  barely  possible,"    said  Dupin.     "The  present 
peculiar  condition  of  affairs  at  court,  and  especially  of 

30  those  intrigues  in  which  D is  known  to  be  involved, 

would  render  the  instant  availability  of  the  document — 
its  susceptibility  of  being  produced  at  a  moment's  notice — 
a  point  of  nearly  equal  importance  with  its  possession." 
"Its  susceptibility  of  being  produced?"  said  I. 


446  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"That  is  to  say,  of  being  destroyed/'  said  Dupin. 

"True,'*  I  observed;  "the  paper  is  clearly  then  upon 
the  premises.  As  for  its  being  upon  the  person  of  the 
minister,  we  may  consider  that  as  out  of  the  question." 

"Entirely,"   said   the   Prefect.     "He   has   been   twice  5 
waylaid,   as   if   by  footpads,   and   his   person   rigorously 
searched  under  my  own  inspection." 

"You  might  have  spared  yourself  the  trouble,"  said 

Dupin.     "D ,  I  presume,  is  not  altogether  a  fool,  and, 

if  not,  must  have  anticipated  these  waylayings,  as  a  matter  10 
of  course." 

"Not  altogether  a  fool,"  said  G ;  "but  then  he's  a 

poet,  which  I  take  to  be  only  one  remove  from  a  fool." 

"True,"    said    Dupin,    after    a    long    and    thoughtful 
whiff  from  his  meerschaum,  "although  I  have  been  guilty  15 
of  certain  doggerel,  myself." 

"Suppose  you  detail,"  said  I,  "the  particulars  of  your 
search. " 

"Why,  the  fact  is,  we  took  our  time,  and  we  searched 
everywhere.     I  have  had  long  experience  in  these  affairs.  20 
I  took  the  entire  building,  room  by  room,   devoting  the 
nights  of  a  whole  week  to  each.     We  examined,  first,  the 
furniture  of  each  apartment.     We  opened  every  possible 
drawer;  and  I  presume  you  know   that,   to  a  properly 
trained  police  agent,  such  a  thing  as  a  secret  drawer  is  25 
impossible.     Any  man  is  a  dolt  who  permits  a  *  secret' 
drawer  to  escape  him  in  a  search  of  this  kind.     The  thing 
is  so  plain.     There  is  a  certain  amount  of  bulk — of  space 
— to  be  accounted  for  in  every  cabinet.     Then  we  have 
accurate  rules.     The  fiftieth   part   of   a   line   could   not  30 
escape  us.     After  the  cabinets  we  took  the  chairs.     The 
cushions  we  probed  with  the  fine  long  needles  you  have 
seen  me  employ.     From  the  tables  we  removed  the  tops. " 

"Why  so?" 


NARRATION  447 

"Sometimes  the  top  of  a  table  or  other  similarly  ar- 
ranged piece  of  furniture  is  removed  by  the  person  wishing 
to  conceal  an  article;  then  the  leg  is  excavated,  the  article 
deposited  within  the  cavity,  and  the  top  replaced.  The 
5  bottoms  and  tops  of  bed-posts  are  employed  in  the  same 
way. " 

"But  could  not  the  cavity  be  detected  by  sounding.^" 
I  asked. 

"By  no  means,  if,  when  the  article  is  deposited,  a  suf- 
10  ficient  wadding  of  cotton  be  placed  around  it.     Besides, 
in  our  case  we  were  obliged  to  proceed  without  noise. " 

"But  you  could  not  have  removed — you  could  not  have 
taken  to  pieces  all  articles  of  furniture  in  which  it  would 
have  been  possible  to  make  a  deposit  in  the  manner  you 
15  mention.  A  letter  may  be  compressed  into  a  thin  spiral 
roll,  not  differing  much  in  shape  or  bulk  from  a  large 
knitting-needle,  and  in  this  form  it  might  be  inserted  into 
the  rung  of  a  chair,  for  example.  You  did  not  take  to 
pieces  all  the  chairs.^" 
20  "Certainly  not;  but  we  did  better — we  examined  the 
rungs  of  every  chair  in  the  hotel,  and  indeed,  the  jointings 
of  every  description  of  furniture,  by  the  aid  of  a  most 
powerful  microscope.  Had  there  been  any  traces  of 
recent  disturbance  we  should  not  have  failed  to  detect  it 
25  instantly.  A  single  grain  of  gimlet-dust,  for  example, 
would  have  been  as  obvious  as  an  apple.  Any  disorder 
in  the  gluing,  any  unusual  gaping  in  the  joints,  would 
have  sufficed  to  insure  detection." 

"I  presume  you  looked  to  the  mirrors,   between  the 
30  boards  and  the  plates,  and  you  probed  the  beds  and  the 
bed-clothes,  as  well  as  the  curtains  and  carpets." 

"That,  of  course;  and  when  we  had  absolutely  com- 
pleted every  article  of  furniture  in  this  way,  then  we  ex- 
amined the  house  itself.     We  divided  its  entire  surface  into 


448  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

compartments,  which  we  numbered,  so  that  none  might 
be  missed;  then  we  scrutinized  each  individual  square 
inch  throughout  the  premises,  including  the  two  houses 
immediately  adjoining,  with  the  microscope,  as  before." 

"The  two  houses  adjoining!"  1  exclaimed;  "you  must  5 
have  had  a  great  deal  of  trouble. " 

"We  had;  but  the  reward  offered  is  prodigious." 

"You  include  the  grounds  about  the  houses?" 

"All  the  grounds  are  paved  with  brick.     They  gave  us 
comparatively    little    trouble.     We    examined    the    moss  10 
between  the  bricks,  and  found  it  undisturbed." 

"You  looked  among  D 's  papers,  of  course,  and  into 

Ihe  books  of  the  library?" 

"Certainly,  we  opened  every  package  and  parcel;  we 
not  only  opened  every  book,  but  we  turned  over  every  leaf  15 
in  each  volume,  not  contenting  ourselves  with  a  mere 
shake,  according  to  the  fashion  of  some  of  our  police 
officers.  We  also  measured  the  thickness  of  every  book- 
cover,  with  the  most  accurate  admeasurement,  and  applied 
to  each  the  most  jealous  scrutiny  of  the  microscope.  Had  20 
any  of  the  bindings  been  recently  meddled  with,  it  would 
have  been  utterly  impossible  that  the  fact  should  have 
escaped  observation.  Some  five  or  six  volumes,  just 
from  the  hands  of  the  binder,  we  carefully  probed,  longi- 
tudinally, with  the  needles."  25 

"You  explored  the  floors  beneath  the  carpets?" 

"Beyond  doubt.     We  removed  every  carpet,  and  ex- 
amined the  boards  with  the  microscope." 

"And  the  paper  on  the  walls ?" 

"Yes."  30 

"You  looked  into  the  cellars?" 

"We  did." 

"Then,"  I  said,  "you  have  beenmaking  a  miscalculation, 
and  the  letter  is  not  upon  the  premises,  as  you  suppose. " 


NARRATION  449 

"I  fear  you  are  right  there,"  said  the  Prefect.     "And 
now,  Dupin,  what  would  you  advise  me  to  do?" 
"To  make  a  thorough  re-search  of  the  premises." 

"That  is  absolutely  needless,"  replied  G .     "I  am 

5  not  more  sure  that  I  breathe  than  I  am  that  the  letter  is 
not  at  the  hotel." 

"I  have  no  better  advice  to  give  you,"  said  Dupin. 
"You  have,  of  course,  an  accurate  description  of  the 
letter.?" 
10  "  Oh,  yes. "  And  here  the  Prefect,  producing  a  mem- 
orandum-book, proceeded  to  read  aloud  a  minute  account 
of  the  internal,  and  especially,  of  the  external  appearance  of 
the  missing  document.  Soon  after  finishing  the  perusal 
of  this  description,  he  took  his  departure,  more  entirely 
15  depressed  in  spirits  than  I  had  ever  known  the  good  gentle- 
man before. 

In  about  a  month  afterward  he  paid  us  another  visit, 
and  found  us  occupied  very  nearly  as  before.     He  took 
a  pipe  and  a  chair,  and  entered  into  some  ordinary  con- 
20  versation.     At  length  I  said: — 

"Well,  but,  G ,  what  of  the  purloined  letter .?  I  pre- 
sume you  have  at  last  made  up  your  mind  that  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  overreaching  the  minister.?" 

"Confound  him,  say  I — ^yes;  I  made  the  re-examination, 
25  however,  as  Dupin  suggested ;  but  it  was  all  labor  lost,  as  I 
knew  it  would  be." 

"How  much  was  the  reward  offered,  did  you  say?" 
asked  Dupin. 

"Why,  a  very  great  deal — a  very  liberal  reward — I  don't 
30  like  to  say  how  much  precisely;  but  one  thing  I  will  say, 
that  I  wouldn't  min'^  o-i-"*--  -  rryy  individual  check  for  fifty 
thousand  francs  to  any  one  tains  me  that  letter. 

The  fact  is,  it  is  becoming  of  more  and  more  importance 
every  day;  and  the  reward  has  been  lately  doubled.     If 


450  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

it  were  trebled,  however,  I  could  do  no  more  than  I  have 
done." 

"Why,    yes,"    said    Dupin    drawlingly,    between    the 

whiffs  of  his  meerschaum,  "I  really — think,  G ,  you 

have  not  exerted  yourself — to  the  utmost  in  this  matter.  5 
You  might  do  a  little  more,  I  think,  eh?" 

"How?  in  what  way?" 

"  Why,  [puff,  puff]  you  might  [puff,  puff]  employ  counsel 
in  the  matter,  eh?  [puff,  puff,  puff].  Do  you  remember 
the  story  they  tell  of  Abernethy?"  10 

"No;  hang  Abernethy!" 

"To  be  sure!  hang  him  and  welcome.  But,  once  upon 
a  time,  a  certain  rich  miser  conceived  the  design  of  sponging 
upon  this  Abernethy  for  a  medical  opinion.  Getting  up, 
for  this  purpose,  an  ordinary  conversation  in  a  private  15 
company,  he  insinuated  his  case  to  the  physician,  as  that 
of  an  imaginary  individual. 

"*We  will  suppose,'  said  the  miser,  *that  his  symptoms 
are  such  and  such;  now,  doctor,  what  would  you  have 
directed  him  to  take?'  20 

"'Take!'  said  Abernethy,  *why,  take  advice,  to  be 
sure.'" 

"But,"  said  the  Prefect,  a  little  discomposed,  "/  am 
'perfectly  willing  to  take  advice,  and  to  pay  for  it.     I  would 
really  give  fifty  thousand  francs  to  any  one  who  would  aid  25 
me  in  the  matter." 

"In  that  case,"  replied  Dupin,  opening  a  drawer,  and 
producing  a  check-book,  "you  may  as  well  fill  me  up  a 
check  for  the  amount  mentioned.  When  you  have  signed 
it,  I  will  hand  you  the  letter. "  30 

I  was  astounded.  The  Prefect  appeared  absolutely 
thunderstricken.  For  some  minutes  he  remained  speech- 
less and  motionless,  looking  incredulously  at  my  friend 
with  open  mouth,  and  eyes  that  seemed  starting  from 


NARRATION  451 

their  sockets;  then,  apparently  recovering  himself  in  some 
measure,  he  seized  a  pen,  and,  after  several  pauses  and 
vacant  stares,  finally  filled  up  and  signed  a  check  for  fifty 
thousand  francs,  and  handed  it  across  the  table  to  Dupin. 
5  The  latter  examined  it  carefully,  and  deposited  it  in  his 
pocket-book;  then,  unlocking  an  escritoire,  took  thence  a 
letter  and  gave  it  to  the  Prefect.  This  functionary  grasped 
it  in  a  perfect  agony  of  joy,  opened  it  with  a  trembling 
hand,  cast  a  rapid  glance  at  its  contents,  and  then,  scram- 

10  bling  and  struggling  to  the  door,  rushed  at  length  un- 
ceremoniously from  the  room  and  from  the  house,  with- 
out having  offered  a  syllable  since  Dupin  had  requested 
him  to  fill  up  the  check. 

When  he  had  gone,  my  friend  entered  into  some  ex- 

15   planations. 

"The  Parisian  police,"  he  said,  "are  exceedingly  able 
in  their  way.  They  are  persevering,  ingenious,  cunning 
and  thoroughly  versed  in  the  knowledge  which  their 
duties  seem  chiefly  to  demand.      Thus,  when  G de- 

20  tailed  to  us  his  mode  of  searching  the  premises  of  the 

Hotel  D ,  I  felt  entire  confidence  in  his  having  made 

a   satisfactory    investigation — so    far    as    his    labors    ex- 
tended." 

"So  far  as  his  labors  extended  ?"  said  I. 

25  "Yes,"  said  Dupin.  "The  measures  adopted  were 
not  only  the  best  of  their  kind,  but  carried  out  to  absolute 
perfection.  Had  the  letter  been  deposited  within  the 
range  of  their  search,  these  fellows  would,  beyond  a  ques- 
tion, have  found  it." 

30  I  merely  laughed,  but  he.  seemed  quite  serious  in  all 
that  he  said. 

"The  measures,  then,"  he  continued,  "were  good  in 
their  kind,  and  well  executed;  their  defect  lay  in  their 
being  inapplicable  to  the  case  and  to  the  man.     A  certain 


452  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

set  of  highly  ingenious  resources  are,  with  the  Prefect,  a 
sort  of  Procrustean  bed,  to  which  he  forcibly  adapts  his 
designs.  But  he  perpetually  errs  by  being  too  deep  or  too 
shallow  for  the  matter  in  hand;  and  many  a  schoolboy 
is  a  better  reason  er  than  he.  I  knew  one  about  eight  5 
years  of  age,  whose  success  at  guessing  in  the  game  of 
*even  and  odd'  attracted  universal  admiration.  This 
game  is  simple,  and  is  played  with  marbles.  One  player 
holds  in  his  hand  a  number  of  these  toys,  and  demands  of 
another  whether  that  number  is  even  or  odd.  If  the  10 
guess  is  right,  the  guesser  wins  one;  if  wrong,  he  loses  one. 
The  boy  to  whom  I  allude  won  all  the  marbles  of  the 
school. .  Of  course  he  had  some  principle  of  guessing; 
and  this  lay  in  mere  observation  and  admeasurement  of 
the  astuteness  of  his  opponents.  For  example,  an  arrant  15 
simpleton  is  his  opponent,  and,  holding  up  his  closed  hand 
asks,  'Are  they  even  or  odd?'  Our  schoolboy  replies, 
*odd,'  and  loses;  but  upon  the  second  trial  he  wins,  for 
he  then  says  to  himself,  *The  simpleton  had  them  even 
upon  the  first  trial,  and  his  amount  of  cunning  is  just  20 
sufficient  to  make  him  have  them  odd  upon  the  second;  I 
will  therefore  guess  odd;'  he  guesses  odd,  and  wins. 
Now,  with  a  simpleton  a  degree  above  the  first  he  would 
have  reasoned  thus.  *This  fellow  finds  that  in  the  first 
instance  I  guessed  odd,  and  in  the  second  he  will  propose  25 
to  himself,  upon  the  first  impulse,  a  simple  variation  from 
even  to  odd,  as  did  the  first  simpleton;  but  then  a  second 
thought  will  suggest  that  this  is  too  simple  a  variation, 
and  finally  he  will  decide  upon  putting  it  even  as  before. 
I  will  therefore  guess  even;'  he  guesses  even,  and  wins.  30 
Now,  this  mode  of  reasoning  in  the  schoolboy,  whom  his 
fellows  term  'lucky,'  what,  in  its  last  analysis,  is  it?" 

"  It  is  merely, "  I  said,  "  an  identification  of  the  reasoner's 
intellect  with  that  of  his  opponent. " 


NARRATION  453 

"It  is,"  said  Dupin;  "and,  upon  inquiring  of  the  boy 
by  what  means  he  effected  the  thorough  identification  in 
which  his  success  consisted,  I  received  answer  as  follows: 
'When  I  wish  to  find  out  how  wise,  or  how  stupid,  or  how 

5  good,  or  how  wicked  is  any  one,  or  what  are  his  thoughts 
at  the  moment,  I  fashion  the  expression  of  my  face,  as 
accurately  as  possible,  in  accordance  with  the  expression 
of  his,  and  then  wait  to  see  what  thoughts  or  sentiments 
arise  in  my  mind  or  heart,  as  if  to  match  or  correspond 

10  with  the  expression.'  This  response  of  the  schoolboy 
lies  at  the  bottom  of  all  the  spurious  profundity  which 
has  been  attributed  to  Rochefoucauld,  to  La  Bougive, 
to  Machiavelli,  and  to  Campanella. " 

"And  the  identification,"  I  said,  "of  the  reasoner's  in- 

15  tellect  with  that  of  his  opponent  depends,  if  I  understand 
you  aright,  upon  the  accuracy  with  which  the  opponent's 
intellect  is  admeasured." 

"For  its  practical  value  it  depends  upon  this,"  replied 
Dupin;  "and  the  Prefect  and  his  cohort  fail  so  frequently, 

20  first,  by  default  of  this  identification,  and  secondly,  by 
ill-admeasurement,  or  rather  through  non-admeasure- 
ment, of  the  intellect  with  which  they  are  engaged.  They 
consider  only  their  own  ideas  of  ingenuity;  and,  in  search- 
ing for  anything  hidden,   advert  only  to  the  modes  in 

25  which  they  would  have  hidden  it.  They  are  right  in  this 
much — that  their  own  ingenuity  is  a  faithful  representative 
of  that  of  the  mass;  but  when  the  cunning  of  the  individual 
felon  is  diverse  in  character  from  their  own,  the  felon 
foils  them,  of  course.     This  always  happens  when  it  is 

30  above  their  own,  and  very  usually  when  it  is  below.  They 
have  no  variation  of  principle  in  their  investigations ;  at  best 
when  urged  by  some  unusual  emergency — by  some  ex- 
traordinary reward — they  extend  or  exaggerate  their  old 
mode  of  practice,  without  touching  their  principles.     What, 


454  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

for  example,  in  this  case  of  D ,  has  been  done  to  vary 

the  principle  of  action?     What  is  all  this  boring,  and 
probing,  and  sounding,  and  scrutinizing  with  the  micro- 
scope, and  dividing  the  surface  of  the  building  into  regis- 
tered square  inches — what  is  it  all  but  an  exaggeration  of  5 
the  application  of  the  one  principle  or  set  of  principles 
of  search,  which  are  based  upon  the  one  set  of  notions 
regarding  human  ingenuity,  to  which  the  Prefect,  in  the 
long  routine  of  his  duty,  has  been  accustomed  ?     Do  you 
not  see  he  has  taken  it  for  granted  that  all  men  proceed  10 
to  conceal  a  letter — not  exactly  in  a  gimlet-hole  bored  in  a 
chair-leg — but,  at  least,  in  some  out-of-the-way  hole  or 
corner  suggested  by  the  same  tenor  of  thought  which  would 
urge  a  man  to  secrete  a  letter  in  a  gimlet-hole  bored  in  a 
chair-leg?     And  do  you  not  see  also,  that  such  rccliercJiS  15 
nooks  for   concealment   are   adapted   only  for   ordinary 
occasions,  and  would  be  adopted  only  by  ordinary  intellects 
— ^for  in  all  cases  of  concealment,  a  disposal  of  the  article 
concealed — a  disposal  of  it  in  this  recherche  manner,    is, 
in   the   very  first   instance,   presumable   and    presumed:  20 
and  thus  its  discovery  depends,  not  at  all  upon  the  acumen, 
but  altogether  upon  the  mere  care,  patience,  and  deter- 
mination of  the  seekers;  and  where  the  case  is  of  im- 
portance— or,  what  amounts  to   the  same  thing  in  the 
political   eyes,   when  the    reward    is   of   magnitude — the  25 
qualities  in  question  have  never  been  known  to  fail.     You 
will  now  understand  what  I  meant  in  suggesting  that,  had 
the   purloined   letter  been   hidden   anywhere   within   the 
limits    of    the    Prefect's    examination — in    other    words, 
had  the  principle  of  its  concealment  been  comprehended  30 
within  the  principles  of  the  Prefect — its  discovery  would 
have  been  a  matter  altogether  beyond   question.     This 
functionary,  however,  has  been  thoroughly  mystified;  and 
the  remote  source  of  his  defeat  lies  in  the  supposition  that 


NARRATION  455 

the  minister  is  a  fool,  because  he  has  acquired  renown  as  a 
poet.  All  fools  are  poets;  this  the  Trefect  feels;  and  he  is 
merely  guilty  of  a  non  distrihutio  medii  in  thence  inferring 
that  all  poets  are  fools." 
5  "But  is  this  really  the  poet.^"  I  asked.  "There  are 
two  brothers,  I  know;  and  both  have  attained  reputation 
in  letters.  The  minister,  I  believe,  has  written  learnedly 
on  the  Differential  Calculus.  He  is  a  mathematician,  and 
no  poet." 

•  0  "You  are  mistaken;  I  know  him  well;  he  is  both.  As 
poet  and  mathematician  he  would  reason  well;  as  mere 
mathematician  he  could  not  have  reasoned  at  all,  and  thus 
would  have  been  at  the  mercy  of  the  Prefect. " 

"You  surprise  me,"  I  said,  "by  these  opinions,  which 

15  have  been  contradicted  by  the  voice  of  the  world.  You 
do  not  mean  to  set  at  naught  the  well-digested  idea  of 
centuries.  The  mathematical  reason  has  long  been  re- 
garded as  the  reason  par  excellence.'' 

'''Ily  a  d,  parier,'"'  replied  Dupin,  quoting  from  Cham- 

20  fort,  '''que  toute  idee  jmhlique,  toute  convention  recue,  est 
une  sottise,  car  elle  a  convenue  au  plus  grand  nombre.' 
The  mathematicians,  I  grant  you,  have  done  their  best  to 
promulgate  the  popular  error  to  which  you  allude,  and 
which  is  none  the  less  an  error  for  its  promulgation  as 

25  truth.  With  an  art  worthy  a  better  cause,  for  example, 
they  have  insinuated  the  term  *  analysis '  into  application  to 
algebra.  The  French  are  the  originators  of  this  practical 
deception;  but  if  the  term  is  of  any  importance — if  words 
derive    any    value    from    applicability — then    'analysis' 

30  conveys,  in  algebra,  about  as  much  as,  in  Latin,  'ambitus' 
implies  'ambition,'  'religio,'  'religion,'  or  'homines 
honesti,'  a  set  of  honorable  men." 

"You  have  a  quarrel  on  hand,  I  see,"  said  I,  "with 
some  of  the  algebraists  of  Paris;  but  proceed." 


456  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

"I  dispute  the  availability,  and  thus  the  value,  of  that 
reason  vv^hich  is  cultivated  in  any  special  form  other  than 
the  abstractly  logical.     I  dispute,  in  particular,  the  reason 
educed   by  mathematical   study.     The   mathematics  are 
the  science  of  form  and  quantity;  mathematical  reasoning  5 
is  merely  logic  applied   to  observation  upon  form  and 
quantity.     The  great  error  lies  in  supposing  that  even  the 
truths  of  what  is  called  fure  algebra  are  abstract  or  general 
truths.    And  this  error  is  so  egregious  that  I  am  confounded 
at  the  universality  with  which  it  has  been  received.     Math-   10 
ematical  axioms  are  not  axioms  of  general  truth.     What 
is  true  of  relation,  of  form  and  quantity,  is  often  grossly 
false  in  regard  to  morals,  for  example.     In   this  latter 
science  it  is  very  unusually  untrue  that  the  aggregated 
parts  are  equal  to  the  whole.     In  chemistry,   also,  the  15 
axiom   fails.     In   the   consideration   of    motive    it    fails; 
for  two  motives,  each  of  a  given  value,  have  not,  neces- 
sarily, a  value,  when  united,  equal  to  the  sum  of  their 
values  apart.     There  are  numerous  other  mathematical 
truths  which  are  only  truths  within  the  limits  of  relation.  20 
But   the   mathematician   argues,   from   his  finite   truths, 
through  habit,  as  if  they  were  of  an  absolutely  general 
applicability — as  the  world  indeed  imagines  them  to  be. 
Bryant,  in  his  very  learned  Mythologij,  mentions  an  anal- 
ogous source  of  error,  when  he  says  that  'although  the  25 
Pagan  fables  are  not  believed,  yet  we  forget  ourselves  con- 
tinually,   and    make    inferences   from    them    as    existing 
realities.'     With  the  algebraists,  however,  who  are  Pagans 
themselves,  the  *  Pagan  fables*  are  believed;  and  the  in- 
ferences are  made,  not  so  much  through  lapse  of  memory,  30 
as  through  an  unaccountable  addling  of  the  brains.     In 
short,  I  never  yet  encountered  the  mere  mathematician 
who  could  be  trusted  out  of  equal  roots,  or  one  who  did  not 
clandestinely  hold  it  as  a  point  of  his  faith  that  ;u^  +  pjrwas 


NARRATION  457 

absolutely  and  unconditionally  equal  to  q.  Say  to  one  of 
these  gentlemen,  by  way  of  experiment  if  you  please, 
that  you  believe  occasions  may  occur  where  x'^-\-'px  is 
not  altogether  equal  to  q,  and,  having  made  him  under- 
5  stand  what  you  mean,  get  out  of  his  reach  as  speedily 
as  convenient,  for,  beyond  doubt,  he  will  endeavor  to  knock 
you  down. 

"I  mean  to  say,"  continued   Dupin,  while  I  merely 
laughed  at  his  last  observation,  "that  if  the  minister  had 

10  been  no  more  than  a  mathematician,  the  Prefect  would 
have  been  under  no  necessity  of  giving  me  this  check.  I 
knew  him,  however,  as  both  mathematician  and  poet; 
and  my  measures  were  adapted  to  his  capacity,  with 
reference  to  the  circumstances  by  which  he  was  surrounded . 

15  I  know  him  as  courtier,  too,  and  as  a  bold  intrigant.  Such 
a  man,  I  consider,  could  not  fail  to  be  aware  of  the  ordinary 
political  modes  of  action.  He  could  not  have  failed  to 
anticipate — and  events  have  proved  that  he  did  not  fail  to 
anticipate — the  waylay ings  to  which  he  was   subjected. 

20  He  must  have  foreseen,  I  reflected,  the  secret  investigations 
of  his  premises.  His  frequent  absences  from  home  at 
night,  which  were  hailed  by  the  Prefect  as  certain  aids 
to  his  success,  I  regarded  only  as  ruses,  to  afford  opportu- 
nity for  thorough  search  to  the  police,  and  thus  the  sooner 

25  to  impress  them  with  the  conviction  to  which  G ,  in  fact, 

did  finally  arrive — the  conviction  that  the  letter  was  not 
upon  the  premises.  I  felt,  also,  that  the  whole  train  of 
thought,  which  I  was  at  some  pains  in  detailing  to  you 
just  now,  concerning  the  invariable  principle  of  political 

30  action  in  searches  for  articles  concealed,  I  felt  that  this 
whole  train  of  thought  would  necessarily  pass  through  the 
mind  of  the  minister.  It  would  imperatively  lead  him  to 
despise  all  the  ordinary  nooks  of  concealment.  He  could 
not,  I  reflected,  be  so  weak  as  not  to  see  that  the  most  in- 


458  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

tricate  and  remote  recess  of  his  hotel  would  be  as  open  as 
his  commonest  closets  to  the  eyes,  to  the  probes,  to  the 
gimlets,  and  to  the  microsco])es  of  the  Prefect.  I  saw,  in 
fine,  that  he  would  be  driven,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to 
simplicity,  if  not  deliberately  induced  to  it  as  a  matter  of  5 
choice.  You  will  reme«mber,  perhaps,  how  desperately 
the  Prefect  laughed  when  I  suggested,  upon  our  first  in- 
terview, that  it  was  just  possible  this  mystery  troubled  him 
so  much  on  account  of  its  being  so  very  self-evident. " 

"Yes,"  said  I,  "I  remember  his  merriment  well.     I   10 
really  thought  he  would  have  fallen  into  convulsions. " 

"The  material  world,"  continued  Dupin,  "abounds 
with  very  strict  analogies  to  the  immaterial;  and  thus 
some  color  of  truth  has  been  given  to  the  rhetorical  dogma, 
that  metaphor,  or  simile,  may  be  made  to  strengthen  an  15 
argument,  as  well  as  to  embellish  a  description.  The 
principle  of  the  vis  inertice,  for  example,  seems  to  be 
identical  in  physics  and  metaphysics.  It  is  not  more 
true  in  the  former,  that  a  large  body  is  with  more  dif- 
ficulty set  in  motion  than  a  smaller  one,  and  that  its  sub-  20 
sequent  momentum  is  commensurate  with  this  difficulty, 
than  it  is  in  the  latter,  that  intellects  of  the  vaster  capacity, 
while  more  forcible,  more  constant,  and  more  eventful 
in  their  movements  than  those  of  inferior  g^ade,  are  yet 
the  less  readily  moved,  and  more  embarrassed  and  full  of  25 
hesitation  in  the  first  few  steps  of  their  progress.  Again; 
have  you  ever  noticed  which  of  the  street  signs  over  the 
shop  doors  are  the  most  attractive  of  attention  ?" 

"I  have  never  given  the  matter  a  thought,"  I  said. 

"There  is  a  game  of  puzzles,"  he  resumed,  "which  is  30 
played  upon  a  map.     One  party  playing  requires  another 
to  find  a  given  word — the  name  of  town,  river,  state,  or 
empire — any  word,  in  short,  upon  the  motley  and  perplexed 
surface  of  the  chart.     A  novice  in  the  game  generally 


NARRATION  459 

seeks  to  embarrass  his  opponents  by  giving  them  the  most 
minutely  lettered  names;  but  the  adept  selects  such  words 
as  stretch,  in  large  characters,  from  one  end  of  the  chart  to 
the    other.     These,    like   the   over-largely    lettered    signs 

5  and  placards  of  the  street,  escape  observation  by  dint  of 
being  excessively  obvious;  and  here  the  physical  oversight 
is  precisely  analogous  with  the  moral  inapprehension  by 
which  the  intellect  suffers  to  pass  unnoticed  those  con- 
siderations which  are  too  obtrusively  and  too  palpably 

10  self-evident.  But  this  is  a  point,  it  appears,  somewhat 
above  or  beneath  the  understanding  of  the  Prefect.  He 
never  once  thought  it  probable,  or  possible,  that  the  minis- 
ter had  deposited  the  letter  immediately  beneath  the 
nose  of  the  whole  world,  by  way  of  best  preventing  any 

15  portion  of  that  world  from  perceiving  it. 

"But  the  more  I  reflected  upon  the  daring,  dashing,  and 

discriminating  ingenuity  of  D ;  upon  the  fact  that  the 

document  must  always  have  been  at  hand,  if  he  intended 
to  use  it  to  good  purpose;  and  upon  the  decisive  evidence, 

20  obtained  by  the  Prefect,  that  it  was  not  hidden  within  the 
limits  of  that  dignitary's  ordinary  search — the  more 
satisfied  I  became  that,  to  conceal  this  letter,  the  minister 
had  resorted  to  the  comprehensive  and  sagacious  ex- 
pedient of  not  attempting  to  conceal  it  at  all. 

25  "Full  of  these  ideas,  I  prepared  myself  with  a  pair  of 
green  spectacles,  and  called  one  fine  morning,  quite  by 

accident,  at  the  ministerial  hotel.     I  found  D at  home, 

yawning,  lounging,  and  dawdling,  as  usual,  and  pretending 
to  be  in  the  last  extremity  of  ennui.     He  is,  perhaps,  the 

30  most  really  energetic  human  being  now  alive — but  that  is 
only  when  nobody  sees  him. 

"To  be  even  with  him,  I  complained  of  my  weak  eyes, 
and  lamented  the  necessity  of  the  spectacles,  under  cover 
of  which  I  cautiously  and  thoroughly  surveyed  the  whole 


460  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

apartment,  while  seemingly  intent  only  upon  the  con- 
versation of  my  host. 

*'I  paid  especial  attention  to  a  large  writing-table  near 
which  he  sat,  and  upon  which  lay  confusedly  some  mis- 
cellaneous letters  and  other  papers,  with  one  or  two  musical  5 
instruments  and  a  few  books.  Here,  however,  after  a 
long  and  very  deliberate  scrutiny,  I  saw  nothing  to  excite 
particular  suspicion. 

"At  length  my  eyes,  in  going  the  circuit  of  the  room, 
fell  upon  a  trumpery  filigree  card-rack  of  paste  board,  10 
that  hung  dangling  by  a  dirty  blue  ribbon,  from  a  little 
brass  knob  just  beneath  the  middle  of  the  mantelpiece. 
In  this  rack,  which  had  three  or  four  compartments,  were 
five  or  six  visiting  cards  and  a  solitary  letter.  This  last 
was  much  soiled  and  crumpled.  It  was  torn  nearly  in  15 
two,  across  the  middle — as  if  a  design,  in  the  first  instance, 
to  tear  it  entirely  up  as  worthless,  had  been  altered,  or 
stayed,  in  the  second.     It  had  a  large  black  seal,  bearing 

the  D cipher  very  conspicuously,  and  was  addressed, 

in  a  diminutive  female  hand,  to  D ,  the  minister  him-   20 

self.  It  was  thrust  carelessly,  and  even,  as  it  seemed, 
contemptuously,  into  one  of  the  uppermost  divisions  of 
the  rack. 

"No  sooner  had  I  glanced  at  this  letter,  than  I  con- 
cluded it  to  be  that  of  which  I  was  in  search.     To  be  sure,  25 
it  was,  to  all  appearance,  radically  different  from  the  one  of 
which  the  Prefect  had  read  us  so  minute  a  description. 

Here  the  seal  was  large  and  black,  with  the  D cipher; 

there  it  was  small  and  red,  with  the  ducal  arms  of  the  S 

family.     Here  the  address,  to  the  minister,  was  diminutive  30 
and  feminine',  there  the  superscription,  to  a  certain  royal 
personage,  w^as  markedly  bold  and  decided;  the  size  alone 
formed  a  point  of  correspondence.     But,  then,  the  radical- 
riess  of  these  differences,  which  was  excessive;  the  dirt,  the 


NARRATION  461 

soiled  and  torn  condition  of  the  paper,  so  inconsistent  with 

the  true  methodical  habits  of  D ,  and  so  suggestive  of  a 

design  to  delude  the  beholder  into  an  idea  of  the  worth- 
lessness  of  the  document;  these  things,  together  with  the 
5  hyper-obtrusive  situation  of  this  document,  full  in  the 
view  of  every  visitor,  and  thus  exactly  in  accordance  with 
the  conclusions  to  which  I  had  previously  arrived — these 
things,  I  say,  were  strongly  corroborative  of  suspicion,  in 
one  who  came  with  the  intention  to  suspect. 

10  "I  protracted  my  visit  as  long  as  possible;  and  while 
I  maintained  a  most  animated  discussion  with  the  minister, 
upon  a  topic  which  I  knew  well  had  never  failed  to  interest 
and  excite  him,  I  kept  my  attention  really  riveted  upon  the 
letter.     In  this  examination,  I  committed  to  memory  its 

15  external  appearance  and  arrangement  in  the  rack;  and  also 
fell,  at  length,  upon  a  discovery  which  set  at  rest  whatever 
trivial  doubt  I  might  have  entertained.  In  scrutinizing 
the  edges  of  the  paper,  I  observed  them  to  be  more  chafed 
than  seemed  necessary.     They  presented  the  broken  ap- 

20  pearance  which  is  manifested  when  a  stiff  paper,  having 
been  once  folded  and  pressed  with  a  folder,  is  refolded 
in  a  reversed  direction,  in  the  same  creases  or  edges  which 
had  formed  the  original  fold.  This  discovery  was  sufficient. 
It  was  clear  to  me  that  the  letter  had  been  turned,  as  a 

25  glove,  inside  out,  re-directed,  and  re-sealed.  I  bade  the 
minister  good-morning,  and  took  my  departure  at  once, 
leaving  a  gold  snuff-box  upon  the  table. 

"The  next  morning  I  called  for  the  snuff-box,  when  we 
resumed,  quite  eagerly,  the  conversation  of  the  preceding 

30  day.  While  thus  engaged,  however,  a  loud  report,  as  if 
of  a  pistol  was  heard  immediately  beneath  the  windows  of 
thfe  hotel,  and  was  succeeded  by  a  series  of  fearful  screams, 

and   the   shoutings   of   a  terrified   mob.     D rushed 

to  a  casement,  threw  it  open,  and  looked  out.     In  the 


462  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

meantime,  I  stepped  to  the  card-rack,  took  the  letter,  put 
it  in  my  pocket,  and  replaced  it  by  a,  facsimile  (so  far  as 
regards  externals)  which  I  had  carefully  prepared  at  my 

lodgings — imitating  the  D cipher   very    readily    by 

means  of  a  seal  formed  of  bread.  5 

"The  disturbance  in  the  street  had  been  occasioned  by 
the  frantic  behavior  of  a  man  with  a  musket.  He  had 
fired  it  among  a  crowd  of  women  and  children.  It  proved 
however,  to  have  been  without  ball,  and  the  fellow  was 
suffered  to  go  his  way  as  a  lunatic  or  a  drunkard.     When   10 

he  had  gone,  D came  from  the  window,  whither  I  had 

followed  him  immediately  upon  securing  the  object  in 
view.  Soon  afterward  I  bade  him  farewell.  The  pre- 
tended lunatic  was  a  man  in  my  own  pay. " 

"But  what  purpose  had  you,"  I  asked,  "in  replacing  15 
the  letter  by  a  facsimile.     Would  it  not  have  been  better, 
at  the  first  visit,  to  have  seized  it  openly,  and  departed  ?** 

"D ,"  replied  Dupin,"  is  a  desperate  man,  and  a  man 

of  nerve.  His  hotel,  too,  is  not  without  attendants  devoted 
to  his  interest.  Had  I  made  the  wild  attempt  you  suggest,  20 
I  might  never  have  left  the  ministerial  presence  alive. 
The  good  people  of  Paris  might  have  heard  of  me  no  more. 
But  I  had  an  object  apart  from  these  considerations. 
You  know  my  political  prepossessions.  In  this  matter  I 
act  as  a  partisan  of  the  lady  concerned.  For  eighteen  25 
months  the  minister  has  had  her  in  his  power.  She 
has  now  him  in  hers — since,  being  unaware  that  the  letter 
is  not  in  his  possession,  he  will  proceed  with  his  exactions 
as  if  it  was.  Thus  will  he  inevitably  commit  himself,  at 
once,  to  his  political  destruction.  His  downfall,  too,  will  30 
not  be  more  precipitate  than  awkward.  It  is  all  very  well 
to  talk  about  the  facilis  descensus  Averni;  but  in  all  kirftis 
of  climbing,  as  Catalani  said  of  singing,  it  is  far  more  easy 
to  get  up  than  to  come  down.     In  the  present  instance  I 


NARRATION  463 

have  no  sympathy — at  least  no  pity — for  him  who  descends. 
He  is  that  monstrum  Jiorrendum,  an  unprincipled  man  of 
genius.  I  confess,  however,  that  I  should  like  very  well 
to  know  the  precise  character  of  his  thoughts,  when,  being 

5  defied  by  her  whom  the  Prefect  terms  *  a  certain  personage, ' 
he  is  reduced  to  opening  the  letter  which  I  left  for  him 
in  the  card-rack." 

"How?  did  you  put  anything  particular  in  it.?" 
"Why,  it  did  not  seem  altogether  right  to  leave  the 

10  interior  blank — that  would  have  been  insulting.     D , 

at  Vienna,  once  did  me  an  evil  turn,  which  I  told  him, 
quite  good-humoredly,  that  I  should  remember.  So, 
as  I  knew  he  would  feel  some  curiosity  in  regard  to  the 
identity  of  the  person  who  had  outwitted  him,  I  thought 

15  it  a  pity  not  to  give  him  a  clue.  He  is  well  acquainted  with 
my  MS.;  and  I  just  copied  into  the  middle  of  the  blank 
sheet  the  words — 

"  ' Un  dessein  sifuneste, 

S'il  rCest  digne  d'Atree,  est  digne  de  Thyeste* 

They  are  to  be  found  in  Crebillon's  Atree." 

Suggestions:  From  what  point  of  view  is  The  Purloined 
Letter  told  ?  What  is  gained  by  this  point  of  view  ?  Cf.  Conan 
Doyle's  stories  of  Sherlock  Holmes  and  Dr.  Watson. 

How  long  a  period  of  time  is  covered  by  the  whole  sequence 
of  events  connected  with  the  story  ?  How  long  a  time  is  covered 
by  the  actual  story  itself,  i.  e.,  the  "action  proper.?"  What 
general  law  for  short  story  writing  can  we  deduce  from  this  ? 
How  effective  is  the  actual  beginning  of  The  Purloined  Letter? 
Compare  this  mode  of  starting  a  story  with  the  modes  employed 
in  Fame^s  Little  Day,  and  The  Man  Who  Was,  respectively. 

After  you  have  selected  a  plot  for  your  own  story,  decide  upon 
the  number  and  type  of  characters  to  be  introduced.  Use 
a  point  of  view  similar  to  that  in  The  Purloined  Letter.  Decide 
carefully  upon  the  best  point  for  the  "action  proper"  to  begin. 
Plan  a  solution  of  the  mystery  that  shall  be  sufficiently  ingenious 
to  arouse  your  reader's  interest  and  suspense. 


464  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

ADAPTED   SUBJECTS 

From  any  one  of  the  following  plots  write  a  "tale  of  ratio- 
cination,"   with  Dupin  as  the  man  who  solves  the  mystery. 

(a)  "While  A.  M.  Jones  and  his  wife,  of  Pittsburgh,  were 
taking  dinner  last  night  at  the  ^otel  Woodstock,  No.  127  West 
Forty-third  Street,  where  they  are  stopping,  their  big  black  tom*- 
ing  car  was  stolen. 

"At  six-thirty  this  morning.  Lieutenant  Kauff  of  the  West 
One  Hundred  and  Twenty-sixth  Street  police  station  found 
an  automobile  at  One  Hundred  and  Twenty-sixth  Street  and 
St,  Nicholas  Avenue.  Its  cylinders  were  cold,  so  Lieutenant 
Kauff  thought  it  had  been  abandoned. 

"The  car  was  in  good  shape  and  intact.  Pinned  to  one  of 
the  rugs  was  an  envelope  addressed  to  Mrs.  Jones,  so  Lieutenant 
Kauff  communicated  with  her.  He  then  hailed  a  milk-wagon, 
and  the  auto  was  towed  to  the  station  house,  where  Mrs.  Jones 
later  claimed  it.  The  envelope  contained  a  ten-dollar  bill, 
with  the  words  "Thank  you,"  written  on  a  slip  of  paper.  No 
clue  to  the  person  or  persons  who  thus  borrowed  the  machine 
has  yet  been  found." 

(b)  "London,  April  13. — At  the  Clerkenwell  Sessions  to- 
day Lord  William  Nevill  was  found  guilty  of  the  charge  of  swind- 
ling a  pawnbroker  and  was  sentenced  to  a  year's  imprisonment. 

"Lord  William  Nevill  is  the  fourth  son  of  the  Marquis  of 
Abergavenny.  He  was  sentenced  to  five  years'  penal  servitude 
on  February  15,  1898,  for  fraud  in  connection  with  a  promissory 
note.  The  crime  for  which  Lord  William  was  sentenced  to-day 
was  stealing  from  a  pawnbroker  a  box  containing  $2000  worth 
of  jewelry,  by  exchanging  it  for  a  similar  box,  apparently  con- 
taining the  jewels.  When  this  box  was  opened,  it  was  found 
to  contain  two  pieces  of  coal  wrapped  in  tissue  paper." 

(c)  "Laredo,  Texas,  May  2. — The  Wells  Fargo  Express 
Company  lias  reported  to  the  authorities  of  Torreon,  Mexico, 
a  loss  of  $03,000  in  Mexican  currency,  which  they  say  was  taken 
from  a  'through'  safe  on  their  City  of  Mexico  train.  The  money 
was  consigned  to  one  of  the  banks  of  Chihuahua. 

"Two  arrests  have  been  made  in  Torreon,  although  it  is  not 
believed  by  the  officials  here  that  these  men  have  the  money. 
It  appears  that  one  of  the  agents  of  the  company  boarded  the 


NARRATION  465 

express  train  at  a  station  between  the  City  of  Mexico  and  Tor- 
reon,  afterward  leaving  the  train.  It  is  said  that  he  was  the 
only  man  who  was  in  the  car  who  knew  the  combination  of 
the  safe.    He  has  not  yet  been  apprehended." 


DR.  HEIDEGGER'S  EXPERIMENT* 

Nathaniel  Hawthorne 

THAT  very  singular  man,  old  Dr.  Heidegger,  once 
invited  four  venerable  friends  to  meet  him  in  his 
study.  There  were  three  white-bearded  gentlemen,  Mr. 
Medbourne,  Colonel  Killigrew,  and  Mr.  Gascoigne,  and 
a  withered  gentlewoman,  whose  name  was  the  Widow 
Wycherly.  They  were  all  melancholy  old  creatures, 
who  had  been  unfortunate  in  life,  and  whose  greatest 
misfortune  it  was,  that  they  were  not  long  ago  in  their 
graves.  Mr.  Medbourne,  in  the  vigor  of  his  age,  had 
been  a  prosperous  merchant,  but  had  lost  his  all  by  a 
frantic  speculation,  and  was  now  little  better  than  a  men- 
dicant. Colonel  Killigrew  had  wasted  his  best  years, 
and  his  health  and  substance,  in  the  pursuit  of  sinful 
pleasures,  which  had  given  birth  to  a  brood  of  pains,  such 
as  the  gout,  and  divers  other  torments  of  soul  and  body. 
Mr.  Gascoigne  was  a  ruined  politician,  a  man  of  evil 
fame,  or  at  least  had  been  so,  till  time  had  buried  him 
from  the  knowledge  of  the  present  generation,  and  made 
him  obscure  instead  of  infamous.  As  for  the  Widow 
Wycherly,  tradition  tells  us  that  she  was  a  great  beauty  in 
her  day;  but,  for  a  long  while  past,  she  had  lived  in  deep 
seclusion,  on  account  of  certain  scandalous  stories,  which 
had  prejudiced  the  gentry  of  the  town  against  her.     It 

♦From   Twice  Told  Tales,  vol.  1.    By  permission  of   Houghton  Mif- 
flin Company. 


466  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

is  a  circumstance  worth  mentioning,  that  each  of  these 
three  old  gentlemen,  Mr.  Medbourne,  Colonel  Killigrew, 
and  Mr.  Gascoigne,  were  early  lovers  of  the  Widow 
Wycherly,  and  had  once  been  on  the  point  of  cutting  each 
others'  throats  for  her  sake.  And,  before  proceeding  5 
further,  I  will  merely  hint,  that  Dr.  Heidegger  and  all  his 
four  guests  were  sometimes  thought  to  be  a  little  beside 
themselves;  as  is  not  unfrequently  the  case  with  old  people, 
when  worried  either  by  present  troubles  or  woful  recol- 
lections. 10 

"My  dear  old  friends,"  said  Dr.  Heidegger,  motion- 
ing them  to  be  seated,  "I  am  desirous  of  your  assistance 
in  one  of  those  little  experiments  with  which  I  amuse 
myself  here  in  my  study." 

If  all  stories  were  true.  Dr.  Heidegger's  study  must  15 
have  been  a  very  curious  place.   It  was  a  dim,  old-fashioned 
chamber  festooned  with  cobwebs,  and  besprinkled  with 
antique    dust.     Around   the   walls    stood    several    oaken 
bookcases,  the  lower  shelves  of  which  were  filled  with  rows 
of  gigantic  folios,  and  black-letter  quartos,  and  the  upper  20 
with    little    parchment-covered    duodecimos.     Over    the 
central  bookcase  was  a  bronze  bust  of  Hippocrates,  with 
which,  according  to  some  authorities,  Dr.  Heidegger  was 
accustomed  to  hold  consultations,  in  all  difficult  cases  of 
his  practice.     In  the  obscurest  corner  of  the  room  stood  'iS 
a  tall  and  narrow  oaken  closet,  with  its  door  ajar,  within 
which  doubtfully  appeared  a  skeleton.     Between  two  of 
the  bookcases  hung  a  looking-glass,  presenting  its  high  and 
dusty  plate  within  a  tarnished  gilt  frame.     Among  many 
wonderful  stories  related  of  this  mirror,  it  was  fabled  that  30 
the  spirits   of   all   the   doctor's   deceased   patients   dwelt 
within  its  verge,  and  would  stare  him  in  the  face  when- 
ever he  looked  thitherward.     The  opposite  side  of  the 
chamber  was   ornamented  with   the  full-length   portrait 


NARRATION  467 

of  a  young  lady,  arrayed  in  the  faded  magnificence  of 
silk,  satin,  and  brocade,  and  with  a  visage  as  faded  as 
her  dress.  Above  half  a  century  ago.  Dr.  Heidegger 
had  been  on  the  point  of  marriage  with  this  young  lady; 

5  but,  being  affected  with  some  slight  disorder,  she  had 
swallowed  one  of  her  lover's  prescriptions,  and  died  on  the 
bridal  evening.  The  greatest  curiosity  of  the  study  re- 
mains to  be  mentioned;  it  was  a  ponderous  folio  volume, 
bound  in  black  leather,  with  massive  silver  clasps.     There 

10  were  no  letters  on  the  back,  and  nobody  could  tell  the 
title  of  the  book.  But  it  was  well  known  to  be  a  book  of 
magic;  and  once,  when  a  chambermaid  had  lifted  it, 
merely  to  brush  away  the  dust,  the  skeleton  had  rattled 
in  its  closet,  the  picture  of  the  young  lady  had  stepped  one 

15  foot  upon  the  floor,  and  several  ghastly  faces  had  peeped 
forth  from  the  mirror;  while  the  brazen  head  of  Hippocrates 
frowned,  and  said — *' Forbear!" 

Such  was  Dr.  Heidegger's  study.  On  the  summer 
afternoon  of  our  tale,  a  small  round  table,  as  black  as 

20  ebony,  stood  in  the  center  of  the  room  sustaining  a  cut- 
glass  vase,  of  beautiful  form  and  elaborate  workmanship. 
The  sunshine  came  through  the  window,  between  the 
heavy  festoons  of  two  faded  damask  curtains,  and  fell 
directly  across  this  vase,  so  that  a  mild  splendor  was 

25  reflected  from  it  on  the  ashen  visages  of  the  five  old  people 
who  sat  around.  Four  champagne  glasses  were  also  on 
the  table. 

"My  dear  old  friends,"  repeated  Dr.  Heidegger,  "may 
I  reckon  on  your  aid  in  performing  an  exceedingly  curi- 

30  ous  experiment.?" 

Now  Dr.  Heidegger  was  a  very  strange  old  gentleman, 
whose  eccentricity  had  become  the  nucleus  for  a  thousand 
fantastic  stories.  Some  of  these  fables,  to  my  shame 
be  it  spoken,  might  possibly  be  traced  back  to  mine  own 


468  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

veracious  self;  and  if  any  passage  of  the  present  tale  should 
startle  the  reader's  faith,  I  must  be  content  to  bear  the 
stigma  of  a  fiction  monger. 

When  the  doctor's  four  guests  heard  him  talk  of  his 
proposed  experiment,  they  anticipated  nothing  more  won-  5 
derful  than  the  murder  of  a  mouse  in  an  air  pump,  or 
the  examination  of  a  cobweb  by  the  microscope,  or  some 
similar  nonsense,  with  which  he  was  constantly  in  the 
habit  of  pestering  his   intimates.     But  without   waiting 
for  a  reply.  Dr.  Heidegger  hobbled  across  the  chamber,   10 
and  returned  with  the  same  ponderous  folio,  bound  in 
black  leather,  which  common  report  affirmed  to  be  a  book 
of  magic.     Undoing  the  silver  clasps,  he  opened  the  vol- 
ume, and  took  from  among  its  black-letter  pages  a  rose, 
or  what  was  once  a  rose,  though  now  the  green  leaves   15 
and  crimson  petals  had  assumed  one  brownish  hue,  and 
the  ancient  flower  seemed  ready  to  crumble  to  dust  in  the 
doctor's  hands. 

"This  rose,"  said  Dr.  Heidegger,  with  a  sigh,  "this 
same  withered  and  crumbling  flower,  blossomed  five  and  20 
fifty  years  ago.  It  was  given  me  by  Sylvia  Ward,  whose 
portrait  hangs  yonder;  and  I  meant  to  wear  it  in  my 
bosom  at  our  wedding.  Five  and  fifty  years  it  has  been 
treasured  between  the  leaves  of  this  old  volume.  Now, 
would  you  deem  it  possible  that  this  rose  of  half  a  century  25 
could  ever  bloom  again?" 

"Nonsense!"  said  the  Widow  Wycherly,  with  a  peev- 
ish toss  of  her  head.  "You  might  as  well  ask  whether 
an  old  woman's  wrinkled  face  could  ever  bloom  again." 

"See!"  answered  Dr.  Heidegger.  SO 

He  uncovered  the  vase,  and  threw  the  faded  rose  into 
the  water  which  it  contained.     At  first,  it  lay  lightly  on 
the  surface  of  the  fluid,  appearing  to  imbibe  none  of  its  ' 
moisture.     Soon,  however,  a  singular  change  began  to 


NARRATION  469 

be  visible.  The  crushed  and  dried  petals  stirred,  and 
assumed  a  deepening  tinge  of  crimson,  as  if  the  flower 
were  reviving  from  a  death-like  slumber;  the  slender 
stalk  and  twigs  of  foliage  became  green;  and  there  was  the 
5  rose  of  half  a  century,  looking  as  fresh  as  when  Sylvia 
Ward  had  first  given  it  to  her  lover.  It  was  scarcely  full 
blown;  for  some  of  its  delicate  red  leaves  curled  modestly 
around  its  moist  bosom,  within  which  two  or  three  dew- 
drops  were  sparkling. 

10  "That  is  certainly  a  very  pretty  deception,"  said  the 
doctor's  friends;  carelessly,  however,  for  they  had  wit- 
nessed greater  miracles  at  a  conjurer's  show;  "pray  how 
was  it  effected.?" 

"Did  you  never  hear  of  the  *  Fountain  of  Youth.?'" 

15  asked  Dr.  Heidegger,  "which  Ponce  De  Leon,  the  Spanish 
adventurer,  went  in  search  of  two  or  three  centuries  ago  ?" 
"But  did  Ponce  De  Leon  ever  find  it .?"  said  the  Widow 
Wycherly. 

"No,"  answered  Dr.  Heidegger,  "for  he  never  sought 

20  it  in  the  right  place.  The  famous  Fountain  of  Youth, 
if  I  am  rightly  informed,  is  situated  in  the  southern  part 
of  the  Floridian  peninsula,  not  far  from  Lake  Macaco. 
Its  source  is  overshadowed  by  several  gigantic  magnolias, 
which,  though  numberless  centuries  old,  have  been  kept 

25  as  fresh  as  violets,  by  the  virtues  of  this  wonderful  water. 
An  acquaintance  of  mine,  knowing  my  curiosity  in  such 
matters,  has  sent  me  what  you  see  in  the  vase. " 

"Ahem!"  said    Colonel    Killigrew,    who    believed    not 
a  word  of  the  doctor's  story;  "and  what  may  be  the  effect 

30  of  this  fluid  on  the  human  frame.?" 

"You   shall   judge  for   yourself,    my   dear   Colonel," 
replied  Dr.  Heidegger;   "and  all  of  you,   my  respected 
friends,  are  welcome  to  so  much  of  this  admirable  fluid, 
as  may  restore  to  you  the  bloom  of  youth.     For  my  own 


470  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

part,  having  had  much  trouble  in  growing  old,  I  am  in 
no  hurry  to  grow  young  again.  With  your  permission, 
therefore,  I  will  merely  watch  the  progress  of  the  ex- 
periment." 

While  he  spoke.  Dr.  Heidegger  had  been  filling  the  5 
four  champagne  glasses  with  the  water  of  the  Fountain 
of  Youth.  It  was  apparently  impregnated  with  an 
effervescent  gas,  for  little  bubbles  were  continually  as- 
cending from  the  depths  of  the  glasses,  and  bursting  in 
silvery  spray  at  the  surface.  As  the  liquor  diffused  a  10 
pleasant  perfume,  the  old  people  doubted  not  that  it 
possessed  cordial  and  comfortable  properties;  and,  though 
utter  sceptics  as  to  its  rejuvenescent  power,  they  were  in- 
clined to  swallow  it  at  once.  But  Dr.  Heidegger  besought 
them  to  stay  a  moment.  15 

"Before  you  drink,  my  respectable  old  friends,"  said 
he,  *'it  would  be  well  that,  with  the  experience  of  a  life- 
time to  direct  you,  you  should  draw  up  a  few  general 
rules  for  your  guidance,  in  passing  a  second  time  through 
the  perils  of  youth.  Think  what  a  sin  and  shame  it  would  20 
be,  if,  with  your  peculiar  advantages,  you  should  not 
become  patterns  of  virtue  and  wisdom  to  all  the  young 
people  of  the  age!'* 

The  doctor's  four  venerable  friends  made  him  no  answer, 
except  by  a  feeble  and  tremulous  laugh;  so  very  ridiculous  25 
was  the  idea,  that,  knowing  how  closely  repentance  treads 
behind  the  steps  of  error,  they  should  ever  go  astray  again. 

"Drink,  then,"  said  the  doctor,  bowing;  "I  rejoice 
that  I  have  so  well  selected  the  subjects  of  my  experi- 
ment." SO 

With  palsied  hands,  they  raised  the  glasses  to  their 
lips.  The  liquor,  if  it  really  possessed  such  virtues  as 
Dr.  Heidegger  imputed  to  it,  could  not  have  been  be- 
stowed on  four  human  beings  who  needed  it  more  wofully. 


NARRATION  471 

They  looked  as  if  they  had  never  known  what  youth  or 
pleasure  was,  but  had  been  the  offspring  of  Nature's 
dotage,  and  always  the  gray,  decrepit,  sapless,  miserable 
creatures,  who  now  sat  stooping  round  the  doctor's  table, 

5  without  life  enough  in  their  souls  or  bodies  to  be  animated 
even  by  the  prospect  of  growing  young  again.  They 
drank  off  the  water,  and  replaced  their  glasses  on  the 
table. 

Assuredly   there  was   an   almost   immediate   improve- 

10  ment  in  the  aspect  of  the  party,  not  unlike  what  might 
have  been  produced  by  a  glass  of  generous  wine,  together 
with  a  sudden  glow  of  cheerful  sunshine,  brightening 
over  all  their  visages  at  once.  There  was  a  healthful 
suffusion  on  their  cheeks,  instead  of  the  ashen  hue  that 

15  had  made  them  look  so  corpse-like.  They  gazed  at  one 
another,  and  fancied  that  some  magic  power  had  really 
begun  to  smooth  away  the  deep  and  sad  inscriptions  which 
Father  Time  had  been  so  long  engraving  on  their  brows. 
The  Widow  Wycherly  adjusted  her  cap,  for  she  felt  al- 

20  most  like  a  woman  again. 

"Give  us  more  of  this  wondrous  water!"  cried  they, 
eagerly.  *'We  are  younger — but  we  are  still  too  old! 
Quick — give  us  more!" 

"Patience,  patience!"  quoth  Dr.  Heidegger,  who  sat 

25  watching  the  experiment,  with  philosophic  coolness. 
"You  have  been  a  long  time  growing  old.  Surely,  you 
might  be  content  to  grow  young  in  half  an  hour!  But  the 
water  is  at  your  service." 

Again  he  filled  their  glasses  with  the  liquor  of  youth, 

30  enough  of  which  still  remained  in  the  vase  to  turn  half 
the  old  people  in  the  city  to  the  age  of  their  own  grand- 
children. While  the  bubbles  were  yet  sparkling  on  the 
brim,  the  doctor's  four  guests  snatched  their  glasses  from 
the  table,  and  swallowed  the  contents  at  a  single  gulp 


472  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

Was  it  delusion  ?  Even  while  the  draught  was  passing 
down  their  throats,  it  seemed  to  have  wrought  a  change 
on  their  whole  systems.  Their  eyes  grew  clear  and  bright; 
a  dark  shade  deepened  among  their  silvery  locks;  they  sat 
around  the  table,  three  gentlemen,  of  middle  age,  and  a  5 
woman,  hardly  beyond  her  buxom  prime. 

"My  dear  widow,  you  are  charming!"  cried  Colonel 
Killigrew,  whose  eyes  had  been  fixed  upon  her  face,  while 
the  shadows  of  age  were  flitting  from  it  like  darkness  from 
the  crimson  daybreak.  10 

The  fair  widow  knew,  of  old,  that  Colonel  Killigrew's 
compliments  were  not  always  measured  by  sober  truth; 
so  she  started  up  and  ran  to  the  mirror,  still  dreading  that 
the  ugly  visage  of  an  old  woman  would  meet  her  gaze. 
Meanwhile,  the  three  gentlemen  behaved  in  such  a  manner  15 
as  proved  that  the  water  of  the  Fountain  of  Youth  pos- 
sessed some  intoxicating  qualities;  unless,  indeed,  their 
exhilaration  of  spirits  were  merely  a  lightsome  dizziness, 
caused  by  the  sudden  removal  of  the  weight  of  years. 
Mr.  Gascoigne's  mind  seemed  to  run  on  political  topics,  20 
but  whether  relating  to  the  past,  present,  or  future,  could 
not  easily  be  determined,  since  the  same  ideas  and  phrases 
have  been  in  vogue  these  fifty  years.     Now  he  rattled 
forth  full-throated   sentences  about  patriotism,   national 
glory,   and  the  people's   right;   now   he   muttered   some  25 
perilous  stuff  or  other,  in  a  sly  and  doubtful  whisper,  so 
cautiously  that  even  his  own  conscience  could  scarcely 
catch  the  secret;  and  now,  again,  he  spoke  in  measured 
accents,  and  a  deeply  deferential  tone,  as  if  a  royal  ear 
were  listening  to  his  well-turned  periods.     Colonel  Killi-  SO 
grew  all  this  time  had  been  trolling  forth  a  jolly  bottle 
song,  and  ringing  his  glass  in  symphony  with  the  cho- 
rus,while  his  eyes  wandered  toward  the  buxom  figure  of 
the  Widow  Wycherly.     On  the  other  side  of  the  table, 


NARRATION  473 

Mr.  Medbourne  was  involved  in  a  calculation  of  dollars 
and  cents,  with  which  was  strangely  intermingled  a  pro- 
ject for  supplying  the  East  Indies  with  ice,  by  harnessing 
a  team  of  whales  to  the  polar  icebergs. 
5  As  for  the  Widow  Wycherly,  she  stood  before  the  mirror 
courtesying  and  simpering  to  her  own  image,  and  greeting 
it  as  the  friend  whom  she  loved  better  than  all  the  world 
beside.  She  thrust  her  face  close  to  the  glass,  to  see 
whether  some  long-remembered  wrinkle  or    crow's-foot 

10  had  indeed  vanished.     She  examined  whether  the  snow 
had  so  entirely  melted  from  her  hair,  that  the  venerable 
cap  could  be  safely  thrown  aside.     At  last,  turning  brisk- 
ly away,  she  came  with  a  sort  of  dancing  step  to  the  table. 
'*My   dear   old   doctor,"   cried   she,    "pray   favor   me 

15  with  another  glass!" 

"Certainly,   my  dear  madam,  certainly!"  replied  the 

complaisant  doctor;  "see!  I  have  already  filled  the  glasses." 

There,  in  fact,  stood  the  four  glasses,   brimful  of  this 

wonderful  water,  the  delicate  spray  of  which,   as  it  ef- 

20  fervesced  from  the  surface,  resembled  the  tremulous 
glitter  of  diamonds.  It  was  now  so  nearly  sunset,  that 
the  chamber  had  grown  duskier  than  ever;  but  a  mild 
and  moonlight  splendor  gleamed  from  within  the  vase, 
and  rested  alike  on  the  four  guests  and  on  the  doctor's 

25  venerable  figure.  He  sat  in  a  high-backed,  elaborately- 
carved,  oaken  arm-chair,  with  a  gray  dignity  of  aspect 
that  might  have  well  befitted  that  very  Father  Time, 
whose  power  had  never  been  disputed,  save  by  this  fortu- 
nate company.     Even  while  quaffing  the  third  draught  of 

30  the  Fountain  of  Youth,  they  were  almost  awed  by  the 
expression  of  his  mysterious  visage. 

But,  the  next  moment,  the  exhilarating  gush  of  young 
life  shot  through  their  veins.  They  were  now  in  the 
happy  prime  of  youth.     Age,  with  its  miserable  train  of 


474  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

cares,  and  sorrows,  and  diseases,  was  remembered  only 
as  the  trouble  of  a  dream,  from  which  they  had  joyously 
awoke.  The  fresh  gloss  of  the  soul,  so  early  lost,  and 
without  which  the  world's  successive  scenes  had  been 
but  a  gallery  of  faded  pictures,  again  threw  its  enchant-  5 
ment  over  all  their  prospects.  They  felt  like  new-created 
beings,  in  a  new-created  universe. 

"We  are  young!     We  are  young!"  they  cried  exult- 
ingly. 

Youth,  like  the  extremity  of  age,  had  effaced  the  strong-   10 
ly-marked   characteristics   of  middle   life,   and   mutually 
assimilated  them  all.     They  were  a  group  of  merry  young- 
sters, almost  maddened  with  the  exuberant  frolicsome- 
ness  of  their  years.     The  most  singular  effect  of  their 
gayety  was  an  impulse  to  mock  the  infirmity  and  decrepi-   15 
tude  of  which  they  had  so  lately  been  the  victims.     They 
laughed  loudly  at  their  old-fashioned  attire,   the  wide- 
skirted  coats  and  flapped  waistcoats  of  the  young  men, 
and  the  ancient  cap  and  gown  of  the  blooming  girl.     One 
limped  across  the  floor,  like  a  gouty  grandfather;  one  set  20 
a  pair  of  spectacles  astride  of  his  nose,  and  pretended 
to  pore  over  the  black-letter  pages  of  the  book  of  magic; 
a  third  seated  himself  in  an  arm-chair,  and  strove  to  imitate 
the  venerable  dignity  of  Dr.  Heidegger.     Then  all  shouted 
mirthfully,   and   leaped   about   the   room.     The   Widow  25 
Wycherly — if  so  fresh  a  damsel  could  be  called  a  widow — 
tripped  up  to  the  doctor's  chair,  with  a  mischievous  merri- 
ment in  her  rosy  face. 

"Doctor,  you  dear  old  soul,"  cried  she,  "get  up  and 
dance  with  me ! "     And  then  the  four  young  people  laughed  30 
louder  than  ever  to  think  what  a  queer  figure  the  poor  old 
doctor  would  cut. 

"Pray  excuse  me,"  answered  the  doctor,  quietly.     "I 
am  old  and  rheumatic,  and  my  dancing  days  were  over 


NARRATION  475 

long  ago.     But  either  of  these  gay  young  gentlemen  will 
be  glad  of  so  pretty  a  partner." 

"Dance  with  me,  Clara!"  cried  Colonel  Killigrew. 
"No,  no,  I  will  be  her  partner!"  shouted  Mr.  Gascoigne. 
5       "She  promised  me  her  hand  fifty  years  ago!"  exclaimed 
Mr-  Medbourne. 

They  all  gathered  round  her.  One  caught  both  her 
hands  in  his  passionate  grasp — another  threw  his  arm 
about  her  waist — the  third  buried  his  hand  among  the 

10  glossy  ciirls  that  clustered  beneath  the  widow's  cap.  Blush- 
ing, panting,  struggling,  chiding,  laughing,  her  warm 
breath  fanning  each  of  their  faces  by  turns,  she  strove  to 
disengage  herself,  yet  still  remained  in  their  triple  embrace. 
Never  was  there  a  livelier  picture  of  youthful  rivalship, 

15  with  bewitching  beauty  for  the  prize.  Yet,  by  a  strange 
deception,  owing  to  the  duskiness  of  the  chamber,  and  the 
antique  dresses  which  they  still  wore,  the  tall  mirror  is 
said  to  have  reflected  the  figures  of  the  three  old,  gray, 
withered  grandsires,  ridiculously  contending  for  the  skinny 

20  ugliness  of  a  shrivelled  grandam. 

But  they  were  young:  their  burning  passions  proved 
them  so.  Inflamed  to  madness  by  the  coquetry  of  the 
girl-widow,  who  neither  granted  nor  quite  withheld  her 
favors,  the  three  rivals  began  to  interchange  threatening 

25  glances.  Still  keeping  hold  of  the  fair  prize,  they  grap- 
pled fiercely  at  one  another's  throats.  As  they  struggled 
to  and  fro,  the  table  was  overturned,  and  the  vase  dashed 
into  a  thousand  fragments.  The  precious  Water  of 
Youth  flowed  in  a  bright  stream  across  the  floor,  moisten- 

30  ing  the  wings  of  a  butterfly,  which,  grown  old  in  the  decline 
of  summer,  had  alighted  there  to  die.  The  insect  flut- 
tered lightly  through  the  chamber,  and  settled  on  the 
snowy  head  of  Dr.  Heidegger. 

"Come,  come  gentlemen! — come,  Madame  Wycherly,*' 


476  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

exclaimed  the  doctor,  "I  really  must  protest  against  this 
riot." 

They  stood  still,  and  shivered;  for  it  seemed  as  if  gray 
Time  were  calling  them  back  from  their  sunny  youth, 
far  down  into  the  chill  and  darksome  vale  of  years.  They 
looked  at  old  Dr.  Heidegger,  who  sat  in  his  carved  arm- 
chair, holding  the  rose  of  half  a  century,  which  he  had 
rescued  from  among  the  fragments  of  the  shattered  vase. 
At  the  motion  of  his  hand,  the  four  rioters  resumed  their 
seats;  the  more  readily,  because  their  violent  iexertions 
had  wearied  them,  youthful  though  they  were. 

"My  poor  Sylvia's  rose!"  ejaculated  Dr.  Heidegger, 
holding  it  in  the  light  of  the  sunset  clouds;  "it  appears 
to  be  fading  again." 

And  so  it  was.  Even  while  the  party  were  looking  at 
it,  the  flower  continued  to  shrivel  up,  till  it  became  as 
dry  and  fragile  as  when  the  doctor  had  first  thrown  it  into 
the  vase.  He  shook  off  the  few  drops  of  moisture  which 
clung  to  its  petals. 

"I  love  it  as  well  thus,  as  in  its  dewy  freshness,"  ob- 
served he,  pressing  the  withered  rose  to  his  withered  lips. 
While  he  spoke,  the  butterfly  fluttered  down  from  the 
doctor's  snowy  head,  and  fell  upon  the  floor. 

His  guests  shivered  again.  A  strange  chillness,  whether 
of  the  body  or  spirit  they  could  not  tell,  was  creeping 
gradually  over  them  all.  They  gazed  at  one  another,  and 
fancied  that  each  fleeting  moment  snatched  away  a  charm, 
and  left  a  deei)ening  furrow  where  none  had  been  before. 
Was  it  an  illusion?  Had  the  changes  of  a  lifetime  been 
crowded  into  so  brief  a  space,  and  were  they  now  four 
aged  people,  sitting  with  their  old  friend.  Dr.  Heidegger  ? 

"Are  we  grown  old  again,  so  soon.^"  cried  they,  dole- 

fully. 

In  truth  they  had.     The  Water  of  Youth  possessed 


NARRATION  477 

merely  a  virtue  more  transient  than  that  of  wine.     The 

delirium  which  it  created    had  effervesced  away.     Yes! 

they  were  old  again.     With  a  shuddering  impulse,  that 

showed  her  a  woman  still,  the  widow  clasped  her  skinny 
5      hands  before  her  face,  and  wished  that  the  coffin  lid  were 

over  it,  since  it  could  be  no  longer  beautiful. 

"Yes,  friends,  ye  are  old  again,"  said  Dr.  Heidegger; 

*'and  lo!  the  Water  of  Youth  is  all  lavished  on  the  ground. 

Well — I  bemoan  it  not;  for  if  the  fountain  gushed  at  my 
10     very  doorstep,  I  would  not  stoop  to  bathe  my  lips  in  it — 

no,  though. its  delirium  were  for  years  instead  of  moments. 

Such  is  the  lesson  ye  have  taught  me!" 

But  the  doctor's  four  friends  had  taught  no  such  lesson 

to  themselves.     They  resolved  forthwith  to  make  a  pil- 
15  grimage  to  Florida,   and  quaff  at  morning,   noon,   and 

night,  from  the  Fountain  of  Youth. 

Suggestions:  Note  especially  the  quiet  simplicity  with  which 
this  solemn  and  beautiful  story  begins.  What  point  of  view 
is  employed  ?  What  would  the  story  gain  or  lose  if  Dr.  Heidegger 
himself  were  the  narrator? 

Where  does  the  action  of  the  story  take  place?  How  long 
a  time  does  the  "action  proper"  cover?  What  general  rules 
of  treatment  may  we  deduce  from  Hawthorne's  practice  in 
this  regard? 

In  writing  your  own  story,  from  one  of  these  unused  plots 
by  Hawthorne,  choose  with  the  utmost  care  your  point  of  view. 
Try  to  get  a  significant  title,  and  suitable  names  for  the  char- 
acters. In  connection  with  plot  (d),  read  likewise,  if  possible, 
The  Minister's  Black  Veil,  and  The  Wedding  Knell,  also  in 
Twice-Told   Tales. 

ADAPTED  PLOTS 

(a)  "A  person  to  be  in  possession  of  something  as  perfect 
as  mortal  man  has  a  right  to  demand;  he  tries  to  make  it  better, 
and  ruins  it  entirely." — Hawthorne,  American  Note  Books, 
Oct.    1837. 


478  A  COLLEGE  COURSE  IN  WRITING 

(b)  "A  person  to  spend  all  his  life  and  splendid  talents 
in  trying  to  achieve  something  naturally  impossible, — as  to 
make  a  conquest  over  Nature.*' — Ibid. 

(c)  "  A  dreadful  secret  to  be  communicated  to  several  people 
of  various  characters, — grave  or  gay, — and  they  all  to  become 
insane,  according  to  their  characters,  by  the  influence  of  the 
secret."— /62"rf,    Dec.     1837. 

(d)  "Stories  to  be  told  of  a  certain  person's  appearance 
in  public,  of  his  having  been  seen  in  various  situations,  and  of 
his  making  visits  in  private  circles;  but  finally,  on  looking  for 
this  person,  to  come  upon  his  old  grave  and  mossy  tombstone. " 
Ibid. 


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